


Hux Resurget

by libertyelyot



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Angst, BDSM, Boatloads of smut, Excitement and adventure and really wild things, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Hux Lives!, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 32,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libertyelyot/pseuds/libertyelyot
Summary: Hux is going to live. He's going to fight. He's going to love. He's going to inflict pain, and he's going to feel it. He's going to triumph. He's going to swan around the bridge in shiny boots looking hot. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 50
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Got bored waiting for the RoS DVD to come out and started writing this regardless. It'll be ages before I get to that bit anyway.

Our first meeting was not what you might call auspicious.

I was still finding my feet at the Pharmacopeia on the new base. Everybody told me how lucky I was to have been headhunted for the shiniest, swankiest, state-of-the-artiest facility in the known galaxies but, to tell you the truth, I was finding it a little overwhelming. There was so much new technology to learn, and so many customers. My student placement had been in the half-demolished psychiatric compound on the most minor of the Quattermine satellites, so this was the upgrade of all upgrades.

After acing my finals (without the aid of several packs of Stimulo, unlike many of my fellow students) I had been called into a meeting with the Director of Pharmaceuticals.

“I’ve had a request from Sentient Resources at First Order headquarters,” he said. “They’re looking for a hotshot young pharma bug. I’d say you fit the bill. Excellent pay and benefits. As a first rung, it’s second to none. You interested?”

“First Order?” I hadn’t planned on getting involved in intergalactic politics. My own little dispensary on one of the up-and-coming planets in the Unknown Regions had been my modest dream. But good money was definitely a draw, the family business having imploded messily earlier in the year, leaving my parents and brother homeless and dependent on my sister, a medic.

“The writing’s on the wall, Sylva. Our star is on the rise. You might as well hitch yourself to it while you have the chance.”

“That’s just something people say, isn’t it?” I cautioned. “Wishful thinking. The Republic is too well established now, too strong.”

“You’ve seen for yourself how many of our graduates are signing up for military training, Sylv. It’s more than an underground movement now.”

“Then you think there’ll be war?”

“I’m sure of it. And if there is, they are going to need first-rate pharma support. You can be part of history, Sylva.”

“What did you say the salary was again?”

He named an eye-watering sum and I signed on the dotted line.

*

Some weeks later, after swearing various oaths of secrecy and undertaking intensive training in military dispensing, I arrived at the half-built new base on the unpleasantly icy planet of Ilum. I spent my first days handing out flu remedies and anti-frostbite patches wondering, as I tapped in the details and bagged up the prescriptions, when things would get interesting.

“I’m taking a rec break, Saxon,” called my supervisor from the inner office. “Should be quiet for an hour or so. I’ll be back before Guard Change.”

“OK, I’ll bag up some of those orders from the Medi Centre,” I offered. “Get ahead of ourselves for once.”

“Great,” he said, hanging his apron and cap on the nail and heading off to the Rec Deck.

Every inch of this place was glossy black; the cleaning droids were on 24/7 shifts keeping it that way, so when I looked up from my work to see a very pale face topped by flaming red hair, it seared into my consciousness like an apparition and I took half a step back to accustom my eyes.

“May I help you, sir?”

A junior officer from the bridge, I guessed, from the black uniform, although he was minus his jacket, so probably off duty.

“Make this up for me,” he said, laying down a script on the counter.

It hadn’t come from a medic. My supervisor had told me that sometimes very senior staff could request medications on their own authority, but I hadn’t had any such requests before today.

I shrugged off a touch of chagrin at his abrupt and overbearing manner and took a look at the script.

“Is this for you?” I asked, frowning as I raised my eyes to him.

“Yes,” he said, evenly but with a hint of impatience.

It was signed by General Hux, whom I understood was the top dog around here, the architect of the place. He had been away on some mission, so I hadn’t laid eyes on him yet, but his name was often muttered with expressive facial gestures, giving me the impression he wasn’t very popular.

“It’s just…” I tried to find the right words. “I don’t suppose General Hux has any pharmaceutical training, so he may not realise that this is an inappropriately large dose of Anti-Somna. And, strictly speaking, you shouldn’t really combine it with Stimulo either…It’s the kind of thing stormtroopers try and get hold of when they’ve been up all night playing Grand Theft Tie-Fighter. Perhaps the General could come down and have a word with my supervisor?”

“Perhaps,” he said, leaning forward, his eyes narrowed, reading my name badge, “Sylva Saxon, he could. About you, and your insubordinate questioning of a senior officer.”

“About me? But I’m just doing my job, sir, and if General Hux knew what he was authorising…”

“ _General Hux_ knows perfectly well what he is authorising,” he rasped. “And he’s tired of being kept waiting. If that order isn’t made up and ready in the next five minutes, _General Hux_ will authorise your dismissal, am I clear?”

The credit dropped like a sack of rocks, and I took an intake of breath so sharp I could have skinned a porg with it.

“Right away, sir,” I squeaked, and fled to the relative safety of the dispensing office.

Really, how was I supposed to know the new General was so…new? I had expected someone like the portrait of Tarkin my dad had had on his office wall. My hands trembled with mortification as I emptied the blister packs into two bags then sealed and labelled them.

“Your prescription, General,” I said meekly, handing them over, praying for him to just take them and go with no further word.

“Thank you. And I have one for you,” he said, waiting until I was looking him unwillingly in the face before continuing. “Spend some time familiarising yourself with the chain of command here. I expect nothing less than excellence from _all_ my personnel, from elite soldiers right down to the lowest drudge. Those who fail to meet that expectation will not be here long. Do I make myself clear, Ensign Saxon?”

“Quite clear, General,” I muttered, my ears stinging hot as if he’d literally slapped the sides of my head.

“Good.” With that, he stalked away, long fingers wrapped tight around the pill bags.

_Lowest drudge_ , I thought furiously, unable to concentrate on my mechanical tasks for some time afterwards. _How charmingly you express yourself, General…General…_ I spent the next half hour trying to come up with a nickname offensive enough to satisfy my wounded ego. I mean, the possibilities were good. You could write a cracking limerick about him. But nothing quite seemed to capture the savagery I was looking for, and I had to content myself with offloading to my supervisor, Sher, when he returned. He was sympathetic, even amused by my story, but at the end he shook his head.

“We can’t afford to get on the wrong side of General Hux,” he sighed. “Nobody can.”

*

Days passed, and the indignity of the encounter receded. I settled into a humdrum routine of working, eating on the Rec Deck and sleeping. There was little time for much in the way of social life, as every spare minute was supposed to be used productively, in further study or working extra hours. Hux, I gathered, led by example in this.

If the money was good, I was certainly earning every credit.

One morning Sher’s troubled expression led me to expect I’d made some kind of catastrophic mistake and I stood still in the doorway, waiting to hear the worst.

“Sylva,” he opened, “did you tell General Hux that the stormtroopers were abusing Anti-Somna?”

“Did I…?” Sith, I had said something like…what was it exactly…?

“General Hux seems to think you did. And he wants us to provide the names and serial numbers of the offenders.”

“I didn’t mean…it was kind of a joke. I think I said it was the _sort of thing_ stormtroopers might ask for after a heavy night. I don’t think I said anybody actually had. Because, I mean…we wouldn’t give it to them, would we?”

Sher sighed with something like relief. “Well, that’s _something_ , I suppose. You haven’t been handing out stimulants like sweeties to any off-duty stormtrooper who winks at you.”

“Of course I haven’t! Do you really think…?”

Sher shook his head. “I only know what this memo from the General says. But we’re in the clear, and no stormtroopers are about to find themselves on the wrong end of their E-11.”

“OK. Good. Phew.”

“So you can just head up to the bridge and tell General Hux what you told me, can’t you?”

“I can…what? No! Why do I have to do that? Can’t we just reply to the memo?” The very idea was making my scalp crawl with dread.

“Memo says ‘report to me with requested intel’, Saxon. That sounds like he’s expecting face-to-face.”

_Fist to face would be better,_ I thought as my stomach contents liquefied.

“Come on,” he said, more gently. “How bad can it be? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Can I have a Sereniton first?”

Sher laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic. Go on. That’s an order.”

Glumly I slunk out of the Pharmacopeia and spent about half an hour trying to find the right escalator and elevator combination to take me to the bridge.

I made the most of the view from the great glass lift that took me high up out of our gloomy depths, wondering if I would ever see Starkiller from this perspective again. Even amid my heart-racing anxiety it was fascinating to see tiny perfect rectangles of stormtroopers moving across the catwalks and platforms below.

At the top of the shaft, armed troopers manned a coldly magnificent vestibule.

“State your business.”

“Erm, Ensign Sylva Saxon from Pharmacopeia for General Hux.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“I think so.”

“Wait here please.”

There was no use trying to pass the time shooting the breeze with the other duty guards. I knew they had instructions only to speak when operationally necessary. As ever, I wondered about the faces beneath those clunky white helmets. Sometimes I saw a few, off duty on the rec deck. A couple were really good-looking. But it was against regulations to date stormtroopers, so admiring glances were as far as I’d get.

Ages later, the go-between returned.

“General Hux will see you in his office,” he intoned, running scanners over my face and body. “OK, you’re cleared. Follow me.”

As I entered the inner sanctum of this huge complex, I was struck by the reverent hush and the dim light. It reminded me of the old temple of the Sith back home, but with screens and uniformed engineers instead of scrolls and statues. If this was a religious building, it was consecrated to the art of war. I had to admit, there was something almost thrilling about it.

Then I remembered what I was here for, and the thrill died as I pictured Hux’s face, one giant sneer against a dead-white backdrop, trimmed with orange. Kriff, it would be so satisfying to slap that sneer off.

Less fun to get pushed through an airlock seconds later though. Best not.

Hux himself came into view, standing with his back to us, looking out through a vast transparisteel window, deep in conversation with another officer. I admired, despite myself, the razor-sharp neatness of his hair and the immaculate cut of his uniform. He was taller than I remembered and, when he turned to face us, I realised that he was not, after all, a blob of carrot-topped sneering pallor. He was, in fact, not bad-looking. At all.

I had to file this mental information away for later, though. For now, it was essential that I concentrate on the task at hand.

“Ah, Ensign Saxon,” he said. “My office, I think.”

He exchanged a couple more words with the other officer, then beckoned me imperiously after him. I felt – probably inaccurately – as if everyone on the bridge was watching me, perhaps curious, perhaps sympathetic, all knowing that I was in for some kind of epic dressing-down.

_You haven’t done anything wrong,_ I reminded myself.

But would he agree with me?


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really enjoying this, hope you are too. Most fun I've had writing something in quite a while. Please read on...

“So,” he said, seating himself behind a desk the size of the Gordian Reach. I tried to replicate standing to attention, thinking he might appreciate it, but whether or not I was doing it right was anyone’s guess. “You have the information I requested.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“In a way, sir,” I said.

“In…a _way_?” His eyes widened, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“By which I mean,” I continued, trying my best not to let his menacing gaze reduce me to gabble, “there aren’t any stormtroopers trying to get hold of inappropriate medications.”

“There aren’t any? Then why did you tell me there were?”

“Well, I didn’t, sir, strictly speaking. I said it was the kind of prescription stormtroopers _might_ ask for, if, you know, if…” The menacing gaze wasn’t easing off and I was starting to understand the meaning of the verb ‘to quail’.

“If they weren’t the highly disciplined and superbly skilled outfit of warriors I have trained them to be?” he capped helpfully.

“Yes, that,” I said. “I mean, what I said, was just, well, it was kind of, you weren’t meant to take it too seriously.”

“You cast slanderous aspersions on the quality of my army and expect me to laugh it off? Is that what I’m meant to understand?”

Kriff, this wasn’t going well. Was there some kind of verbal SkinSave I could plaster over this growing wound? I forced myself to meet his eyes. Ooh, they were green. Lovely green eyes. No, terrifying green eyes!

“It was just a joke,” I managed. “Not a good one. I’m sorry.”

“Just…a…joke,” he repeated slowly, as if needing translation. “Should I believe you? Are you covering for anybody?”

“Honestly, sir, you can ask Officer Sher to show you the records if you don’t believe me. They’ll show that nobody’s been ordering Anti-Somna or Stimulo unless a medic has recommended it.” _Nobody apart from you, that is_.

There was a long pause, during which he drummed his fingers on the desk, apparently as an aid to deep thought. Musician’s hands, I thought, or something similarly artistic. They weren’t remotely battle-scarred or warriorish. He would have a delicate touch, but underneath it there would be pure steel…Sith, woman, _what_ are you thinking?

I shook my head to get the rogue ogle out, and he looked up at me, as if only just remembering that I was present.

“Very well, Ensign Saxon, I’ll take you at your word this time,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“But,” he said portentously, and the nerve endings that had been slackening off strung tight once more. “I think we need to address this attitude of yours. You have been awarded the immense privilege of a position here on Starkiller Base and you need to learn to take your work here in the employ of the First Order sufficiently seriously.”

“Oh, I do, sir,” I blurted but he shut me up with a look.

“ _Much_ more seriously than you do at present,” he said. “What time do you take recreation?”

“Between sixteen and eighteen,” I said unhappily, sensing that my precious free time was about to disappear.

“Good,” he said briskly. “What I propose is that you see for yourself exactly why my elite forces are no joking matter. You are going to join them at their training session. You will report to Military Gymnasium Four at sixteen fifteen sharp every day for the rest of this week.”

“But, sir, I don’t think I have the right kit…”

“Then I suggest you present yourself at the Quartermaster’s stores, Ensign. You are dismissed.”

Ugh, this was horrific. Never mind the pretty face and the poet’s fingers, Hux had just rocketed straight to number one on my Most Hated list.

When I lamented my fate to Sher in the dispensary, he just laughed.

“Maybe he’s pulling your pigtails,” he suggested, grinning.

“What do you mean? I don’t have pigtails.”

“I mean, maybe he finds you _interesting_. I’d wink at you now, if it wasn’t against regulations.”

“Are you serious?” But the thought gave me a pleasurably warm, weak feeling down in my solar plexus.

“Why not? You’re young, bright, not exactly hideous. Hux has to have some human impulses somewhere deep inside.”

“Yeah, sadism and cruelty,” I said, but I needed to change the subject because I was starting to crave a stomach settler.

“Oh well, could be worse,” said Sher. “At least it’s only General Hux you’re on the wrong side of, and not Kylo Ren.

*

The Quartermaster had given me a black singlet with the First Order symbol on it, and some tight black shorts in a stretchy, shiny material. I couldn’t afford the high performance footwear the stormtroopers all had issued to them, so he gave me some cheap, plain canvas pull-ons with rubber soles. It wasn’t my idea of a stylish ensemble, and certainly not what I wanted to be buried in when this session, as I fully expected it to, killed me.

Entering the gymnasium at sixteen fifteen I saw, to my dismay, that the session was going to be led by the very tall trooper captain with the silver helmet who scared the daylights out of me – and not just me, judging by the way the stormtroopers fell over themselves to keep formation around him.

I found myself an obscure position at the back, as far away from the captain as I could get.

“Ah,” the captain spoke, and to my shock the voice was female. “Our new recruit. General Hux told me about you. All right, Ensign, keep out of the way of the troops – they don’t need distracting. Eyes on me,” she barked suddenly, as one or two curious stormtrooper heads turned in my direction. “Try to keep up,” she advised, speaking to me again. “But if you feel that death is imminent, by all means, take a rest break.”

Well, this was encouraging.

They launched into what the captain – Phasma, as she was addressed by the stormtroopers who brought in the equipment from the store room – called a warm up. To me it was a full-on cardiac onslaught, turning my limbs to water and my lungs to cotton wool.

Keeping up was not going to be an option.

I had been in plank position for approximately 307 years when I heard the door shush open and shut behind me.

“Carry on, Captain,” said a horribly familiar voice somewhere in the region of my feet. “I’ve just come to observe for a few minutes.”

“General,” Phasma acknowledged politely, before bellowing out some more motivational threats.

The toes of his shiny black boots appeared in my peripheral vision, accompanied by some gentle tutting.

“Not quite right, Ensign,” he said. “The line of your body needs to be much straighter and lower.”

I tried to adjust my posture, although my upper arms were about to give out and I was beginning to gasp with the effort of it all, but without success.

The next thing I knew his boot was in the small of my back, holding me in position. I squealed with the shock of it but I had to hand it to the stormtroopers – not one of them reacted at all.

Phasma released us from the plank a few seconds later and started us on a series of squats. I was intensely conscious of Hux, lurking behind me, getting a prime eyeful of my arse in those snug shorts. Was he checking it out? I was dying to look behind me, but I didn’t dare.

He wandered off once we got on to star jumps and didn’t return, which I was pretty happy about at the time.

But later, in my bunk, all I could think about was his boot on my body, containing it, bending it to his will, and it was so insanely arousing that I couldn’t keep my hands off myself.

I had to tell myself in the fried-eyed, thick-headed, muscle-torn morning that it wasn’t _him_ I’d been fantasising about. I was just a bit sex-starved, that was all. Hadn’t been touched by a soul since Denvo in my second year at the Academy, and that hadn’t ended well, so I’d maintained a dignified distance from the dating pool for the remainder of my time there.

“I _don’t_ fancy General Hux,” I told myself severely, after dragging my agonised flesh into the shower. “Good cheekbones don’t make up for a terrible personality. Ow ow ow ow.” How in the galaxy was I going to make it into the gym again later? Would I be allowed to use a wheelchair?

Sher very kindly let me have some muscle rub that was nearing its use-by date and spent most of the morning laughing at my inability to bend or stretch to the lower or higher shelves. I was trying, without much success, to get myself up off the floor after restocking the antihistamines when there was a rap on the counter. I pulled myself up, grimacing all the time, to find myself face to face with a tall, pale, dark-haired man.

“Any service here?” he asked snippily.

“How can I help, sir?” I didn’t know whether or not he was high ranking, as he was wearing some kind of all-enveloping cloak rather than a military uniform, but I’d learned that it was always best to err on the side of caution around here.

He pulled aside a few locks of unruly hair to reveal an angry red patch on the side of his forehead.

“It’s this new helmet I’ve got. I’m getting it lined in soft fabric, but in the meantime – can you see – it’s chafing me.”

“Ouch, yes, that looks sore. I can give you some ointment for it but in the meantime I guess you’d better avoid wearing the helmet until it clears up.”

“I can’t not wear my helmet,” he said stiffly.

“Why, is it part of your uniform?”

“I don’t have a _uniform_ ,” he snarled. “I’m a Knight of Ren.”

I shut my eyes. What _was_ it with me and top-level Starkiller personnel? And why were they all so loth to take clinical advice?

“I see, sir,” I said. “Well, I could give you a gel patch to put on the wound. That would protect it from the worst of the rubbing. You’ll need to change it every couple of hours though.”

“Fine, give me a pack.”

I sent him away with gel patches and some ointment.

“I see you’ve met Kylo Ren,” said Sher, emerging from the stock cupboard.

“Yes, but I didn’t realise he had an actual face,” I said. “He’s not what I would have expected at all.”

“What would you have expected?”

“All ravaged and raddled, like Darth Vader, I suppose. But he’d be all right if he’d crack a smile.”

“Careful, Ensign,” said Sher. “You’ve already got General Hux after you – you don’t need Kylo Ren on top of that.”

“Sith Almighty, General Hux is not after me,” I protested, but I could feel my blush spreading like spilt oil. “Besides, he’s not my type. Can’t stand a man with no sense of humour.”

“If you say so. Come on, I’ve booked you a session in the lab watching how to synthesise Energen. Ensign Colli will be down to relieve you any minute.”

*

Later on, at the gym, General Hux appeared once more. And this time he had a whip. Well, something like a whip – some kind of long thin rod, maybe leather or a flexible synthetic.

Thanks to copious application of the out-of-date muscle rub, I was just about able to move without wailing, but I was on poor form and I sensed Hux would extract maximum sadistic enjoyment from the fact.

And he certainly did. Any time my legs weren’t wide enough apart or my arms weren’t in a straight enough line or my bottom was sticking out too much, I got a tap or a prod with the rod until my posture was correct. In the last instance, he swatted the thing squarely across my bum, quite hard, mid press-up, so that I yelped with pained indignity.

“Maintain position, Saxon,” he ordered. “I want to see an improvement or I’ll add another week to the tariff.”

At that moment I burned with loathing for him, yet once again, in my bunk I burned with something else altogether. I lay with one hand on my bottom, across which that stroke of the whip still throbbed, and worked myself with savage need, hissing out one long syllable as I crested the final wave, seeing those eyes, that face, his utter focus on my humiliation.

“Huxxxxxxxx.”


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I rewatched The Last Jedi for the first time since seeing it at the cinema. I didn't want to see it again for ages because I was just so disappointed with how the writing and the storyline treated Hux, but all the same, watching again has made me feel the Hux love a millionfold. He is my precioussss. Please read on!

Sick excitement accompanied me to the gym the next day. What would he do next? Would he bring the whip again? Would he actually touch me with his hands this time? And, if he did, how would I stop myself from moaning with desire?

YOU DON’T DESIRE HIM! HE IS A JERK! YOUR BODY IS PLAYING TRICKS ON YOU!

These were the motivational phrases I employed to try and calm myself down, and to an extent they worked, until the session came and went without a visit from Hux and my sick excitement turned to sick disappointment.

 _Get real, girl, a General of the First Order is not going to be bothered about a lowly pharma bug._ I mean, it was boringly obvious.

Captain Phasma caught me at the end of the session, while I was lying flat on my roll-up mat, trying to replenish my fatally sapped energy stores. All the stormtroopers were long gone; I could hear the splashing of their showers and low grunting conversation from the changing rooms.

“You must have really pissed him off,” she remarked, removing her helmet to reveal the kind of healthy, glowy, blonde good looks I would never have imagined underneath it. “A whole week. He’s only ever sentenced people to a couple of days before.”

“I just seem to rub him up the wrong way somehow,” I said ruefully, mopping torrents of sweat from my brow. “I didn’t even _do_ anything.”

“And he’s _never_ come in to observe a class before,” she continued. “He’s far too busy for that, as a rule.”

I had no answer to that, busy inwardly digesting and savouring her words.

“Are you sure this is a punishment?” she asked, helping me to my feet. The metallic coldness of her glove made me hiss slightly as I wobbled upright. “Or is there something else going on?”

“Such as what, Captain?” I asked, thankful that my over-exertions meant my face was too beet-red for any blushes to be detected.

“Oh, I don’t know. He just seemed to be enjoying himself no end with that whip yesterday. But I shouldn’t be indulging in barrack room gossip. Let’s leave it there, until tomorrow. Now get yourself into the shower before the next squadron arrives.”

Phasma’s words had the fatal effect of reviving and deepening my fantasy yearnings. If only she’d kept her mouth shut, I might have got myself to sleep without recourse to excessive self-pleasuring, but the thought that Hux might be using me to fulfil a very similar desire was much too tantalising to ignore.

The next day in the Pharmacopeia, I spent far too long checking the inventory for anything that might counteract the raging hots. There was nothing. I was going to have to ride this crush out until it faded. Meanwhile, I was getting unwanted attention in the refectory. Groups of stormtroopers would watch me pass with my tray, then huddle together, muttering avidly. I would hear the words ‘Hux’, ‘gym’, ‘whip’.

A couple of junior techies, immature as their reputation suggested, even came to the Pharmacopeia and asked me for advice on how to treat whip marks because they’d ‘heard I knew all about that stuff’.

I gave them the queen of stony stares and handed them a jar of salve. They left it on the counter and made for the elevators, snurking all the way.

“Chin up, kid,” said Sher, shaking his head at their backs. “You’re hot gossip now but they’ll lose interest before you know it and be on to the next thing.”

“I don’t know,” I said gloomily. “I doubt I’ll ever live it down. That’s who I am in their minds forever. The girl who got whipped in the gym by General Hux.” I had to turn away from him after speaking the words out loud so he didn’t see my eyes half-closed in illicit rapture.

“Well, I shouldn’t say this, but most of us pharma bugs think he’s been pretty hard on you. Nobody gets away with anything round here, but Hux’s discipline is usually fair and proportionate, at least.”

“Hmm.” I was still fighting my way through a wall of incredible turned-on-ness.

“Makes we wonder if something’s going on there. I said it before, and I stand by my theory.”

“Yeah, well, a bouquet of flowers would do the job just as well,” I snarked. We laughed and got on with our work.

Two hours till gym time.

He was there again, halfway through the session, but there was no boot, no whip, just an inescapable, hackle-raising focus on what I was doing, combined with softly-spoken, almost whispered words of command.

“Knees higher. Arms straight. Further forward. Faster.”

And the absurd thing was that his orders made me able to perform at a level I had found previously unachievable. There was something about those warring urges to scream both ‘Fuck off!’ and ‘Fuck me!’ that really really worked.

He missed one more session, then the whip reappeared for a couple of painful days, then, on the final day he simply stood there, watching me, no words, no actions, just a hand on his chin and a low-browed steady gaze until I felt like flinging my arms wide and yelling “ _What? Just push me on the mat and have me, if that’s what you want._ ” He could see, I was sure, how he unnerved me, and so he kept it up, staying much longer than the customary five minutes.

It wasn’t until Phasma called time and sent the stormtroopers to the showers that he altered his stance and looked over to the captain.

“Leave us for a moment, Captain Phasma,” he said.

“Very good, General.” She swept off and I stood, shaking, hurting, utterly conscious of my crimson skin and sweat-sodden singlet. What man could resist such a vision?

“So, then,” he said, “lesson learned?”

“Yes, sir,” I panted, although I was still far from clear what the lesson was supposed to be. ‘Avoid General Hux’ seemed to be the crux of it.

“Well, there’s some improvement,” he said grudgingly. “But your plank is still terrible. Let’s sort that out once and for all before we’re done. Drop.”

I almost burst into tears on the spot, but I knew there was no way to disobey him, so I forced my protesting body back down on the mat.

He crouched beside me and I nearly swooned dead away as he put his gloved hands on each elbow, angling them to his precise requirements then, keeping one hand at the back of my neck, he walked his fingers along my spine until it was at the correct alignment.

“This bottom of yours,” he said, smacking it smartly. “You do seem to like pushing it out, don’t you?”

I couldn’t answer. I could barely breathe any more, my teeth were gritted, sweat dripping into my eyes.

He stood back up again and watched me until, with a cry of despair, I collapsed face-forward on the mat.

“Sorry, sir,” I mumbled into the mat. “I just couldn’t…”

“You should work on your stamina,” he recommended then, after a short silence, “Well, I don’t have time for this. Get changed, get back to work and stay out of trouble. Do you think you can do that?”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

I heard the door close after him, rolled over on to my back and stared, floored and pole-axed with lust, at the gym ceiling until the next squadron turned up and I had to make a hurried exit.

*

For weeks, I was carried along on this libidinous wave, daydreaming alternately of smacking him in the face and wrapping myself around him like a sex-crazed vine. But the fantasies had to suffice, because I didn’t lay eyes on him in all that time. I had no reason to go to the bridge, and he contrived to visit the pharmacopeia for his terrible combination of meds only when I was off shift.

Maybe he’s avoiding me because he knows he just won’t be able to keep his hands off me, I speculated optimistically. Then: there was definitely something between us, but he can’t act on it because of his rank. Then: it was a bit of fun for him, that was all. Finally: actually, I just piss him off and that’s all there is to it.

Eventually a fragile equilibrium was restored and I was able to concentrate fully on my work again. The stormtroopers stopped nudging and winking (not that I could see the winking underneath those helmets) when I passed through the refectory. My butt stopped being the butt of junior techie ribaldry. All reverted to a semblance of normality. Although, annoyingly, it was still his face I saw during those climactic moments in my bunk, and probably always would be until I met somebody less totally off-limits.

*

“Hey, there’s going to be a party,” announced Sher, looking up from the lab monitor.

We all looked at each other, the concept of ‘party’ being fairly alien to everyone on Starkiller Base. I finished mixing a batch of antivirals and gave him my full attention.

“Seriously,” he continued. “A grand commissioning of Starkiller Base, now all the work is complete. Well, apart from the weapon. But all systems are in place to build it, so…party time.”

“What sort of party?” I asked. “Ballgowns and fizz or wild excess?”

“Dress uniform,” said Sher, consulting the memo. “Venue is Flight Hangar One. One week from today.”

Excitable chatter filled the lab straight away, but I couldn’t stay and participate. Medcentre needed these antivirals immediately so, with regret, I bagged them up and set off on my commission.

A sentry droid had malfunctioned on the main concourse, causing all kinds of drama, so I took a detour, navigating the maze of narrow service corridors behind the vast open spaces at the heart of the complex.

I was just starting to wonder if I was lost when I heard raised voices issuing from one of the anterooms that lined the passageway. It seemed like something worth avoiding, so I looked over my shoulder, trying to come up with an alternative route, but then one of the voices, high with anger, struck me dead centre. Hux! I crept closer. His companion, or adversary, had an unusually low, echoing boom of a voice, distorting his words so they were indecipherable from where I stood. Kylo Ren! Had to be.

I longed to make out what they were fighting about, but I could only pick up odd phrases here and there. “Supreme Leader Snoke.” “My _weapon_.” “The Force!” and finally, from Hux in a kind of strangled snarl, “Tinpot Darth Vader.”

I was almost close enough to put my ear to the door now, but a sudden loud crash and a yell of shock halted me in my tracks. I flattened myself against the wall, heart pounding in my ears as the door flung open and a giant swirl of cloak flounced through and swooped off – fortunately in the opposite direction to me.

Once he was safely out of sight, I slipped into the anteroom.

Hux, with a sizeable bleeding gash on the side of his head and his perfect hair in disarray, had staggered to his feet and was looking around the room as if completely unable to work out where he was.

“Oh Kriff, what happened, are you OK?” I ran towards him, noting Ren’s helmet lying on the floor at his feet.

“Can you believe that?” he said, slurring slightly, looking at me as if he had never laid eyes on me in his life. “Threw his helmet at me. I don’t know what I did. But that’s what my father’s like. He’s just…like that.”

“Shh, it’s all right. I need to get you the Medcentre. Oh dear, you’re a bit wobbly on your feet. Hold on to me now.” I managed to steer the shambling Hux to the door, but he stopped there, staring into the corridor.

“Is this…? Where is this? Where are you taking me? Get your hands off me. Where’s Admiral Sloane?”

He dislodged me with some force, sending me sprawling on to the floor and lurching drunkenly off. I scrambled to my feet, managed to find some droids to help and finally delivered him, increasingly belligerent but also increasingly incapable of resistance, to the Medcentre.

“I’ve got General Hux,” I reported urgently to the triage officer. “Head injury, concussion, hopefully nothing serious but...”

“Thank you, we’ll take this from here.”

I watched, still clutching my bag of antivirals, as he was manhandled on to a gurney and wheeled off to Diagnostic Imaging.

“We’ve got this,” said the receptionist gently. “You can go now.”

“Actually,” I said, handing over the drugs, “is it OK if I stay?”

She smiled and indicated a row of chairs against the opposite wall.

“You can go in and see him once he’s out if you want,” she offered. “We’ll probably need someone to keep an eye on him for a few hours, make sure he doesn’t deteriorate. You’re from Pharma so I guess you’re up to speed on what to watch for.”

“Yes, I am. Thanks,” I said, only now noticing now that my hands were shaking. “That would be great.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Valentine's gift to you all <3.

I’d been there a good half hour, replaying the scenes in my mind, going over what he’d said. His father? His father was just like that?

I knew he was the son of Brendol Hux, who had died somewhat mysteriously after long and mostly distinguished service to the Empire and, subsequently, the Order. But I didn’t know much, just bits and pieces gleaned from the compulsory Imperial History lectures at the Institute. He was something to do with stormtrooper training. There was a statue of him in one of the gardens in the Training Complex. He looked nothing like his son, apart from the colouring.

And then, what about this animosity between Hux and Kylo Ren? This was a fascinating development. Was it jealousy? Rivalry? Some kind of unforgivable behaviour in the past? I’d have given a lot, at that moment, to have known.

My train of speculative thought was interrupted by the arrival of a nurse from beyond the security door. He conferred with the receptionist, who looked at me and nodded.

“Sounds like the General isn’t in any danger,” she said. “But he’s a little drowsy and needs to sleep it off. You can go in and sit with him if you like.”

“Thanks,” I said, rising and following the nurse into the inner sanctum of the Medcentre.

“Probably a good idea to rouse him a little every twenty minutes or so,” said the nurse. “Make sure his pupils are a good size, no worsening confusion, that kind of thing.”

“There might be worsening irritation at being woken up all the time,” I suggested nervously.

The nurse laughed. “Must admit, rather you than me. But he’ll understand why you’re doing it, I’m sure. OK.” He led me into a cubicle. Hux lay beneath a thin white sheet, paler than ever, a surgical dressing covering the wound. “Here’s the communicator if you need to call anyone in. He shouldn’t need more than an hour, two max. Good luck.”

We were alone, Hux and I. A situation I had often daydreamed of, although in my imaginings both of us had been conscious. I stood gazing down at him for a while, noticing little details like his light eyelashes fluttering slightly and the pleasing shape of his ears. Swallowing down a thrill of fear, I put out a fingertip and brushed it, whisper softly, along one fuzzy sideburn, then felt creepily guilty and withdrew it at once, looking around for signs of surveillance equipment.

What was most striking, when I surveyed his face overall, was how _different_ he looked in sleep. The high tension that seemed his natural waking state was all gone, his cheekbones slacker, his lips untightened and sensually full. There was a strange tenderness, almost vulnerability, about him that nobody on the bridge ever got to see. I wanted to kiss his brow, but chastely, as a mother or a sister might – the conferring of a benediction upon a beloved youth.

But what I had to do was bring him out of that sweet, sorely-needed sleep, so I reached out once more and prodded his shoulder, as gently as I could at first, then a little harder until his reddened eyelids rippled then flew open and glazed green eyes stared up at me.

“Whassit? Mmm? Shh, no.” He turned over and went back to sleep.

Damn! This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Was he more badly injured than the medics thought?

I tried again, shaking his shoulder with my whole hand this time until he growled and batted me off.

“G’way,” he slurred, sliding again into blissful unconsciousness.

Was this a bad sign? Should I get one of the nurses? I was loth to have a third party barging into this strangely intimate scene and I resolved to give it one last try before relinquishing him to the professionals. I wondered, giggling nervously, if I could awake him with a kiss but the idea of the potential repercussions was enough to discourage me from such recklessness.

All right. I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and put my mouth to his ear.

“General,” I said, as loudly as I dared. “General Hux. Wake up.” And I accompanied my words with quite a hard pinch to his hand.

At this his eyes flew open and he struggled to sit up, staring around him in alarmed confusion. Pupils were a good size, I noted. Colour coming back to his cheeks, focus to his gaze.

He turned to blink at me.

“You,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Compos mentis, I diagnosed. He definitely knew who I was.

“Making sure your concussion is wearing off,” I explained, pulling up a chair to sit beside him.

He put a hand to the dressing.

“What happened? I can’t quite remember…did you do this, Saxon?”

“Not me. I just happened to be passing at the time. Kylo Ren threw his helmet at you.”

“He did?” Hux stared at me, his lips parted, the old tension returning to his features. “And you were there?”

“I was passing,” I reiterated. “On my way here, as luck would have it. I heard an argument, then a crash and a shout. Kylo Ren left the room and I went in and found you. Bleeding. Confused. Brought you here. And here we are.”

“That…he threw his helmet at me,” Hux repeated, appearing to bite back some stronger words.

“Yes. Terrible behaviour. I should hope he’s in big trouble,” I said, trying to angle myself into his good graces.

Hux’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Fat chance,” he said. “Golden boy will get away with it again, as per usual.”

“Well, that hardly seems fair,” I said. “He gets off scot-free for attacking and injuring you. I get seven days of torture for…” I stopped. I had been about to say ‘nothing’ but had a feeling this wouldn’t play well with Hux.

“Are you accusing me of injustice?” he asked, but without real force. His tone was almost teasing, in fact. “You know I wouldn’t advise it.”

“No,” I sighed. “Of course not.”

“Good,” he said and he almost smiled at me. “How’s your plank?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” I muttered, adding, “General,”then, “Please,” in case he thought I was insolent. I had forgotten how difficult it was to have any kind of conversation with him without falling into a series of traps.

“Let’s see it then,” he said, making me wonder once again why I ever wanted anything to do with him. For fuck’s sake!

“You want me to…?”

“Are you questioning me, Ensign? Drop. Now.”

Some people spoke of changes in personality after a bump on the head but it was quite clear that Hux was still exactly the same relentless bastard as he’d always been. Wonderful news!

Inwardly screaming all the obscenities in my memory, I assumed the required position. It was harder to do in my Pharma gear of heavy white labcoat and chemical-proof workboots and I felt as foolish as I had ever done in my life.

“Dear me,” sighed Hux mockingly. “Still can’t get that straight line from neck to heels, can you? Get that bottom down. Hold it tight. Keep it there until I give permission.”

I could only get through this hell by imagining myself visiting all kinds of violence on Hux. I shut my eyes and thought of getting a good yank of that hair, a sound slap of that cheek, a strong kick to the crotch.

“All right, you can get up now,” he said just as I was mentally sinking a very sharp blade between his ribs, and I gasped and lay flat on the floor for a few seconds before dragging myself back up.

“Don’t think I’m ungrateful for your help,” he said, conciliatory now as I fell back into the chair. “I appreciate it, Ensign Saxon.”

“Oh…it was…nothing, sir,” I said, still working on obtaining command of my breathing.

“If you hadn’t been passing, it could have been more serious.”

Was this a rapprochement? Perhaps I should take advantage of it, steer the conversation into more intimate waters?

“General,” I said, plunging ahead. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said forbiddingly. “I imagine you have work to get back to.”

No, I wasn’t going to let him put me off. I was going to do this.

“It’s work-related,” I hedged. “Clinically relevant.”

“It had better be,” he said.

“I just wondered…with all that medication you take…how much sleep you get, on average?”

“That’s none of your business,” he snapped, then, more softly, “Not enough, I suppose. Four hours, as a rule.”

“You’re gambling with your health, sir,” I told him. “Do you ever do anything to…let off steam?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I fail to see how this is in any way pertinent,” he said.

“Sorry, sir,” I said, but I kept my gaze level with his, making it clear I was still waiting for an answer, much I expected him to cut me off and send me on my way.

“I go to the shooting range,” he said at length. “Or the gym.”

“I see how doing that can help to vent frustration,” I said, my heart beating double time at the long and ongoing unbroken eye contact between us. “But it’s hardly _relaxing_ , is it? Or…pleasurable?”

His adam’s apple bobbed. His pupils dilated. Still within the safe range, I was glad to note.

“So what do you suggest?” he asked, his voice low now, a little husky.

“Don’t you ever get a massage…or…?”

He bent his head lower, closer to mine.

“Or…?” he whispered.

The door squeaked open and a medic bustled in, comms pad in hand.

“Ah, you’re back with us, General,” she said briskly. “Let’s test your vital signs and see about signing you off. Thanks, Ensign, for all your help. You may as well go now.”

I tried to meet Hux’s eyes again, to see if he might countermand the medic, but he was all icy efficiency once more, offering his wrist for a pulse check.

I nodded and fled.


	5. Chapter 5

My encounter with Hux in the Medcentre fell at the start of my busiest work week yet. A pernicious strain of Ilan Flu meant that five percent of Starkiller’s work force needed various strains of antibiotic, not to mention the usual over-the-counter remedies. This fell at the same time as the biannual STD screening, which saw every humanoid staff member presenting themselves at the Scan Platform over the course of four days. Sher took charge of this, which meant double shifts in the laboratory for me. At the end of it, Sher was satisfied to find that, once again, everybody was clean and clear.

Well, almost everybody.

One person had not shown up for his scan. That person was Kylo Ren.

He appeared at the dispensary the day after the screenings ended, on the hunt for some Sereniton.

“Trouble sleeping, sir?” I asked lightly, but underneath my polite manner I was wary as hell, not to mention pretty angry with him. He seemed to have suffered no repercussions for his attack on Hux, just as Hux had predicted. Obviously he had no idea I had witnessed the incident, but I doubted he’d have demonstrated any shame even if he had. And I wouldn’t have seen it through the helmet anyway.

He grunted in reply.

“You were sent a memo,” I ventured as I checked the cabinets. “A follow-up? To the screening call-up?”

Silence.

“Did you receive it?” I put the pack of Sereniton on the counter and smiled tightly at him.

“There’s no need,” he said abruptly.

“Oh, well, even if you haven’t been sexually active in the last six months, it’s still compulsory,” I said. “I mean, I got screened, and the Nuns of G’aav’aar’oon have seen more action than me lately. It’s just protocol.”

“I said, there’s no need,” he repeated angrily. “Here.” He dropped some credits on the counter, snatched up the Sereniton and marched off.

“Someone’s touchy,” remarked Sher, who always seemed to be lurking in the background watching me while I did all the awkward customer interface.

“Maybe he’s still a virgin,” I surmised.

“Or he’s picked up something nasty from his last vacation on Canto Bight. Perhaps we should send another memo to all staff. Don’t sleep with Kylo Ren.”

I snorted with amusement, somehow unable to imagine him in the bedroom. Unlike certain other high-ranking Starkiller personnel, whom I imagined in the bedroom constantly.

“Do you think he’ll wear that helmet to the party?” I asked. “Are you ready for it? I still don’t know what to do with my hair.”

And we veered off the subject of Ren and on to the much more current topic of party preparations. Two days now until the big day and the base was buzzing.

The following afternoon I covered the dispensary alone while Sher and Ensign Colli went to the Quartermaster’s Stores in search of evening wear. The lab behind was quiet too; now that the Ilan Flu was on the way out, people were taking time off to recover from the back-to-back shifts they had been working.

I took the chance to replenish stocks, singing to myself as I anticipated the forthcoming great event. Hux would be there. And I would be there. Maybe we could flirt, just like we…kind of…almost…did in the Medcentre. Maybe we could dance. Maybe we could dance together cheek to cheek, and he would put his lips to my ear and whisper sweetly…

“Is anybody here?”

I froze, pressing myself against the stock cupboard shelves. The voice drifting through the open door to the dispensary was the very one I had just imagined pouring itself into my auricular orifice.

I took a deep breath, smoothed my hair, put my shoulders back and walked through to the counter.

“May I help you, sir?”

He contemplated me for a moment, his eyes lighting up. Kriff, he looked great in that uniform. I had to force myself not to salivate.

“How’s your head?” I asked.

“Much better, thank you. Are you all alone here? Where’s your supervisor?”

“He’s at lunch, sir. Some are on leave. Some on recuperation. Did you need to see him particularly?”

“No, I suppose not. How good are you with needles?”

“I have my Level Three certificate,” I said proudly. “Never missed a vein yet.”

“That’s encouraging. All right then. It occurred to me this morning that I might need a booster of NonConcep 3. Can you check your records?”

“Oh…yes…of course,” I said, stupidly flustered as I turned to the monitor and keyed in his details.

Yes, he was right. He was pretty much overdue for another dose of the First Order’s favoured contraceptive cocktail. In fact, he’d let it lapse for a good couple of months. But now…did I dare to wonder why?... _now_ it was on his mind.

“I’ll go and sort it out,” I said, turning back to him. “Um, you’ll need to remove your coat and your…”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said.

“Right, of course.” I bolted into the stock room and took far longer than necessary to open a box of syringes with unco-operative fingers. I needed to get this trembly situation under control if I was going to inject him. I was going to inject him! Wah.

I triumphed over the shaky fingers and managed to fill a syringe with NonConcep 3. Deep breaths. Steady hand. Keen eye. Hux didn’t know it, but he was to be my first injection customer outside of the practical exam suite at the Institute.

When I came out, he was sitting on the chair in the corner, coat and jacket off, one sleeve of the dark silky shirt he wore underneath rolled right up to the shoulder.

“That’s great,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I approached.

I sat in the chair opposite him and put the syringe down on a trolley, tearing open a sachet with an antiseptic numbing wipe inside. His arm was milky pale, tautly muscled and scattered with light freckles. I had a moment’s giddy vision of losing control and kissing each one of them.

Instead, I took the wipe and rubbed it slowly, gently, across his upper arm.

“You’ve got lovely veins,” I said, grimacing as soon as the words came out. _Why_ did I say that?

He chuckled. “That’s the best compliment I’ve had all day.”

“No,” I said, my cheeks burning, “I meant, you know, easy to find. Close to the surface. Some people’s veins take an age to…”

“It’s all right,” he said softly, his eyes glowing at me. “I know what you meant.”

“So, if you could just clench your hand into a fist a few times…I’m sure you know the drill…”

I watched him as he curled his long fingers into his palm and tensed them rhythmically, once, twice, three times. I wanted them curled around me, so badly, but I needed to be looking at the target vein, darkening, coming closer to the surface of his near-translucent skin.

“OK,” I said, taking up the syringe and removing the cap. “You know what to expect, so I won’t…”

“Sharp scratch,” he quoted, his lips twitching upwards.

“That’s the one. Nice and still for me…” I put the tip of the needle to his skin, found my spot, pressed down on the plunger. He didn’t flinch. The syringe emptied and I pulled the needle clear.

“There, you’re done,” I said. I sprayed the site with coagulant and offered him a plaster, which he waved away. “Six month’s worth, effective immediately.”

“Immediately?” he said archly, raising an eyebrow as he pulled his shirtsleeve back down.

I stood up, looked around, couldn’t think what to do next and sat back down again.

“All done,” I repeated brightly.

“What about you, Ensign?” he asked. “I hope you’re all up to date with everything. You pharmacists ought to lead by example.”

“Oh, yes, I’m all…fine.” I smiled over-effusively, unnerved by the closeness of his knee to mine, the keenness of his gaze, the way he leant towards me.

“I’m glad to hear it. I think it’s best to be prepared. Don’t you?”

He stood up, put on his jacket. I scurried away to update his record on the monitor, my entire body fizzing like a bottle of Daruvvian champagne. Was he flirting with me, or terrorising me? It was impossible to tell with Hux.

“Thank you, Ensign,” he said, shrugging on his coat. “Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Perhaps you’ll see me…tomorrow night?” I repeated idiotically.

“Yes. At the party. I hear there may be dancing.” He brushed an invisible speck of dust from a cuff, gave me a sideways nod and left the pharmacopeia.

I sat down, chewing on a knuckle. I was still like that when Sher and Colli came back, twenty minutes later.

*

Before the party, there was the commissioning ceremony to be endured. Century after millennium passed standing on the freezing concourse watching stormtroopers and armoured vehicles do the same formation marches and big-gun salutes over and over again . I huddled with all the other non-military personnel, waving my First Order flag, stamping my feet to keep off frostbite, thinking of the colossally large glass of mulled Kusani wine I was going to have after all this.

And Hux, of course. I had been thinking a _lot_ about him. About his manner yesterday in the dispensary, his words. I had to be prepared. There may be dancing.

Once all the marching stormtroopers had lined up across the parade ground, Hux came forward. His face loomed hugely on a pair of video screens either side of the platform and he launched into a speech about our shared vision and our priceless work and the gathering storm which would take us to a new dawn and all that kind of stuff. His voice, at times, almost broke with passion. He was truly invested in this whole smash-the-Republic thing. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I mean, I was from an old Empire family, I disliked the way the galaxy had gone and found the New Republic bloated and decadent, unfit for purpose, but I couldn’t claim to have fully bought into the First Order ideology. Hux’s wholehearted conviction made me a little ashamed of my scepticism.

Perhaps it made us wrong for each other. But then I rolled my eyes at myself. We weren’t exactly suited in the first place. A pharma bug, fresh out of school, and a General. No, not a General. _The_ General. It shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t work.

But all the same, when I went back to my quarters to get ready for the party, I made sure my skin was silk, my nails were impeccable, my hair was shining in perfect coils. My perfume was a sexy fruity chypre, to make up for my underwear, which was unfortunately utilitarian. I only owned one decent dress – the one I had worn to my graduation – and it was more to my mother’s taste than my own, but it nipped in and flared out in a pleasing enough way and the stripes of bugle beads that ran down the skirt shimmered against the swishy black silk. I had no jewellery and I had to borrow some make-up off Colli, but the final result was not too bad.

“It doesn’t matter what _you_ think of it,” I told myself, smoothing down my skirts as I stared into the mirror at my abnormally glamorous self. “What will _he_ see?”

I pushed my feet into the awful high heels I never wore but my mother thought gave me an elegant shape and turned to the door.

I was prepared.


	6. Chapter 6

_Probably nothing will happen_ , I told myself, standing flat against the elevator wall while various other personnel in flouncy dresses or opera capes chatted and laughed, eager for their first glimpse of the festivities in Flight Hangar One.

There was a general ‘wow’ once we were low enough to see properly. Huge installations with the First Order symbol picked out in dazzling light hung from the catwalks above the floor, which swarmed with people. On a large platform, a group of musicians were playing favourite tunes of the old Empire. The edges of the space were lined with loaded buffet tables, and droids bearing trays of champagne wheeled up and down on a ceaseless refreshment patrol.

I tried to pick out General Hux amid the crowd, but it was far too large.

A droid handed us each a coupe as we stepped out of the elevator, repeating to each of us, “Three glasses maximum by order of the General. All breakages must be paid for.” I rolled my eyes a little at that. Such control freakery might be interesting in the bedroom but was very dull at a party. Still, it might save us running out of liver salts at work the next day.

As I walked toward the buffet table, I was approached by several dress-uniformed stormtroopers, requesting a dance, but I turned them all down. I needed to get my bearings, and a couple of those Ubuuga caviar blinis, before I got friendly with anyone.

I found a quiet spot, beneath a grounded tie-fighter, and watched the dancing. I had never learned to dance, much to my mother’s exasperation. She was an old-school Imperial wife. In her opinion, young women like me needed to know how to attract a high-ranking husband by dancing gracefully, agreeing with all their political opinions and remaining chaste until the wedding night. I had never felt cut out for any of that. Luckily, neither had my older sister, Riina. We had stood together against her, prioritised our academic careers, left home to study and moved on to work in the wider worlds away from our home planet. Poor mother. I shook my head, wondering what she would make of Hux. _Eligible_ , she would crow, and insist on taking me shopping for General-snaring attire. _But make him wait, my girl. He will appreciate you all the more for it._

Kriff, what a load of archaic nonsense, I told myself, but a little part of me asked myself, _what if she turns out to be right?_ Ugh, it was all such a minefield. I was going to do what felt good, I decided.

I gave my empty plate to a passing droid and stepped back out into the melée. Almost immediately, I spotted General Hux, looking swoon-inducingly mouth-watering in his white dress uniform, a double row of shiny medals pinned to his chest. He was talking to Phasma, who was looking pretty hot herself in a white, form-fitting dress jumpsuit. For a horrible moment, my stomach dropped as I wondered if that was why he had needed the contraceptive injection. He and Phasma…

He turned his head, and I knew he had seen me, so I feigned obliviousness and made a show of looking for Sher or Colli or any other available pharma bug that might come to my rescue. Just a few feet away was a guy I recognised from the lab. Jiff, was it? I gave him a little wave and plunged into the sea of people.

“Hi,” he said, mildly bemused by my over-friendly manner. “I was just going to get something to eat – have you tried the risotto cakes?”

“No, but the caviar is to die for...”

Jiff stepped back a little and nodded respectfully to a point behind me, by which I gathered Hux was on his way over. My heart began to play a game of chase with the beat of the music.

“Dance with me,” I hissed to Jiff.

“What?”

“Just…I love this song, oh wow, one of my favourites, let’s go.”

I took his elbow, steering him towards the dance floor.

“You know this song?” he said, clearly confused, but he played along, laying a clumsy hand on my hip and clasping his sweaty palm with mine. “Why is General Hux _watching_ us? What’s going on…?”

We had barely shuffled into the correct hold when a shadow fell over my shoulder and a polite but steely voice requested, “Excuse me, may I cut in?”

“Be my guest,” I said, breaking free from Jiff and offering him to Hux as a partner.

Jiff looked equal parts flabbergasted and terrified, while Hux raised his eyes to the skies.

“That is _not_ what I meant.”

“I’m sorry, General, all yours, please, take her, thank you, sir,” gibbered Jiff, retiring to the sidelines as if he had a blaster at his head.

“You think you’re funny, I suppose,” said Hux, insinuating himself into Jiff’s place, with rather more success than poor Jiff had had. His palm was dry, his hold on my hip light but firm.

“I thought so,” I said. “I mean, it was a _bit_ funny.” I giggled, but it was more nerves than hilarity. Sith, now he was close to me, now we were touching, I could barely get half a thought straight in my head. He felt perfect and he smelled divine. That was about as far as my brain could get.

“I’ve spoken to you before about taking things more seriously, haven’t I?” he said, easing me into a waltz step.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. And I think you should know, I’ve never learned to dance.”

“Doesn’t matter. Just follow me.”

“But _you_ can dance,” I observed, rather surprised. I had assumed dancing with Hux might be a bit like taking to the floor with a 3PO unit. But he made it seem effortless.

“Oh, I had lessons after my first promotion,” he said. “All those officers’ dinner dances. You have to know a few basic steps.”

He led me skilfully, carefully towards a less crowded area of the dance floor, further away from the music. I saw the lights whirl and twirl over his shoulder, with which my eyes were only just level. If we got any closer, the top of my head would barely skim in underneath his chin. Cheek to cheek was never going to happen. Well, not while we were standing anyway…

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, bending his head, angling his lips to my ear, lowering his voice. “About what you said back in the Medcentre.”

“What I said…?” I was now truly incapable of reasoning. His breath was warm on my skin, his hand increasing its pressure at my waist. My knees might give way at any moment. I would evaporate into a puddle on the dance floor. A housekeeping droid would have to mop me up.

“Yes, about finding a pleasurable way to release tension.”

“Oh, that,” I whispered. In small but significant increments he was drawing me closer with each revolution of the floor.

“I think perhaps you might have been on to something,” he continued, his lips now all but touching my ear, the tip of his nose in my hair.

“Ahhhh.” A sigh.

“I was wondering what you would recommend.” Our hands were locked together tight as tight now, our bodies flush, my cheek tucked into his chest, the medals cold on my skin. I prised them off, angled my neck to look up at him. His face hung over mine, our lips almost meeting. Were my pupils as giant as his?

_Agjoeja[ejga0]oej]-ap#oj_ was all my brain could come up with in response.

He tutted softly, apparently enjoying my lapse into lust-induced incoherence.

“Never mind,” he said. “I have an idea of my own. But this isn’t really the place to talk about it. I’m going to go to my chambers now. I want you to stay here for ten minutes… are you taking this in, Saxon?”

I nodded, swallowing, fainter by the second. Was this real? Was he actually intending to seduce me? Could there be any other explanation for all this?

“Good. Stay here for ten minutes, then take the service elevator to Floor 101. Which floor?”

“101,” I repeated obediently.

“After ten minutes,” he repeated. “We can’t be seen to go up together.”

“Base gossip,” I murmured understandingly.

“Oh, I don’t care about that. But there are certain people I’d rather keep in the dark when it comes to my personal business.”

_Kylo Ren,_ I thought, but I didn’t say it. _I am your personal business_. I shivered with delicious tension.

“So I’ll see you in the lobby of floor 101 in ten minutes,” he concluded, loosening his hold on me and looking around, scoping out his escape route. “Get yourself something to eat. And don’t be late.”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.”

And then he was gone, leaving me to stare blankly at the First Order lighting rigs and try to regain some fragments of self-control. _Eat_? That wasn’t going to be possible.

But I turned towards the buffet tables anyway, thinking it was as good a place as any to kill time. Before I could get moving, something tight closed around one wrist and yanked me, shrieking with surprise, back to the dance floor. Kylo Ren, sans helmet, glowered down at me.

“You like dancing, do you?” he growled.

“What…? What’s going on? Sir?”

He didn’t waltz like Hux, that was for sure. He dragged me around as if I were an errant prisoner-of-war being manhandled to the brig.

“It’s nice that the General’s made a friend,” he said sarcastically. “After all these years. What’s going on?”

“I don’t understand the question, sir.” And I really didn’t.

“What are you two plotting? What was he saying to you?”

“It was nothing…just smalltalk,” I said, craning over my shoulder, desperate for a way out of this.

“Sure it was.” He laughed without mirth. “I can find out, you know. I can look into your mind.”

“If you must know,” I said, “it was me that found him after you attacked him with your helmet last week. I took him to the Medcentre. He just wanted to say thank you, that’s all.”

Ren held me at arm’s length, frowning hard. Then, without a word, he dropped my arm and stalked off. Man, he had terrible manners.

I glanced at my comlink. What time was it now? I had five more minutes to catch my breath, dust myself down and deliver myself to my doom.

“Hey, Sylva!” It was Janyss Colli, my fellow newbie at the Pharmacopeia. It didn’t look as if she was adhering too strictly to the three-glasses rule. “Who’s your new man?”

“Sorry?”

“You got it going on with Kylo Ren? Or General Hux? Can’t keep up with you, girl. Don’t forget me when you’re the Empress of the Galaxy.”

“Hahaha, yeah, right. Sorry, got to go. Left the iron on in my quarters…”

She shouted something after me as I threaded a path to the service lifts but whatever it was, I didn’t catch it and I wasn’t going to go back and ask. Couldn’t be late for General Hux. Didn’t want to give him an excuse to get that whip out again…or did I…?

I had 101 floors in which to lean back and think about what might be about to happen. As the elevator bore me up, up and away from all things familiar and stable, I tried to envisage how the rest of the evening might change me. But what if he was just teasing me? What if he just wanted me to watch old movies about the glory days of the Empire with him? Kriff, what if he wanted me to synthesise some illegal drugs for him? That could _so_ be what he was after. And would explain all the secrecy and the sneaking around. It was not my body but my pharmaceutical knowledge that he wanted.

My shoulders sagged and I let out such a sigh that the lift droid looked me up and down through its lens and made a few quizzical bleeps.

“It’s OK,” I told it. “Just bringing myself back down.”

It bleeped again.

“Yeah, I know that doesn’t make much sense when we’re going up. Oh, is this floor 101 now? Thanks.”

The door opened to sleek low-lit darkness.

I stepped out, took a look around. It was extremely opulent, with artistically twisted miniature trees glowing softly around the perimeter of the plush-carpeted space. Somewhere amongst the high-shine blackness there must be an opening or a door of some kind…

From the darkness, a tall, cloaked figure appeared, pale-faced, red-haired.

“You’re late,” he said, but without ire. “Come here then, let’s not waste any more time.”

He held out a hand and I took it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could it be? Yes it could - something's coming, something good... (contemplates AU West Side Story with First Order/Rebels instead of Jets/Sharks...but no. Much more of this to write first.)


	7. Chapter 7

Hux’s quarters, dimly-lit but clearly luxurious, comprised of one cavernous open-plan space with ensuite fresher. A vast holoscreen took up most of one wall and cast an eerie bluish light into the chamber, flickering and flashing as different images and text scrolled across.

For a moment I thought we weren’t alone, then realised that what I could hear was the chirping and chattering of housekeeping droids as they buffed up the kitchen area.

He snapped his fingers at them and they instantly rolled into a cupboard space and low-powered themselves.

“Before we go any further,” said Hux, picking up a datapad from a shelf and swiping until he found what he was looking for, “I need you to sign this.”

“What is it?” I asked, rather intimidated by my surroundings, the situation, everything – not to mention still unsure of what exactly was going on here.

“It’s a pledge that nothing you see or hear in these quarters will find its way out. Just by being here with me, you may find that you overhear communications that are not meant for your ears,” he explained. “Highly classified information.”

“I already signed the Official Secrets Pact when I started here,” I reminded him.

“This is an order of magnitude above that,” he said, handing me a stylus. “Read it, and sign. Or, of course, you could leave…”

“No, I’ll…” I read through the document, which was clear and to the point, then scrawled my signature.

“Good.” He laid down the datapad and turned to me, the intensity of his attention heightening so that we seemed to stand in a little pocket outside time and space, he and I. “So here we are.”

“You had something you wanted to tell me, sir,” I managed to say over the heaving of my breath and the drumming of my heartbeat.

“Yes.” He reached out and I watched two of his fingers move closer until they blurred out of focus and landed on my face, soft tips brushing down my cheek. I let out a rather embarrassing sigh. _It isn’t the drugs he’s after_. His hand tightened, cupping my chin, angling my face so my eyes could not escape his gaze. “You are a problem, Saxon.”

“ _I_ am?” I blurted. “Why?”

“As the most senior General of the First Order,” he said, bending lower, speaking more softly, “my mental equipment needs to be razor-sharp, perfectly honed. The level of focus on the tasks at hand and attention to their detail that I must demonstrate would make most people dizzy. As such, you will understand, I do not welcome distraction.”

“No, I’m sure,” I whispered, trying my best to fight through this perfect storm of arousal and fear he seemed to raise up within me at each encounter.

“So it’s somewhat to my displeasure,” he continued, his lips closer to my ear now, his grip tighter about my chin, “that, ever since you forced yourself on my attention, I find myself constantly preoccupied with all the things I want to do to you.”

“Oooh.” It came out as something close to a laugh, which wasn’t my intention, but my self-control was slipping away from me like a runaway gravsled.

“You have jammed the signal, Saxon,” he told me. “I can’t concentrate on my reports when all I can see is your pert backside in that gym.”

“What…are you going to do about it?” I put a hand on his chest. He had dropped the cloak and was no longer wearing the medal-laden dress jacket, just a high-collared white shirt, underneath which I could feel the delicious warmth of his body.

His answer was wordless but authoritative. He caged me in his arms, crushed me into him and pressed his mouth on mine. At first I could barely process the sensation; my mind was so busy screaming _This is it! This is actually happening!_ But soon enough I melted into it, drinking in the sweet fullness of his lips, the latent strength of his hold on me, the way my whole body opened up to accept this strange new feeling.

The kiss, exploratory at first, grew in depth once it was clear that neither of us was inclined to deny it. My fingers found their way to the back of his neck, his palm slipped down over my hip, I took a handful of his hair, he took a handful of my bottom. He pushed at my lips with the tip of his tongue; I offered no resistance but let him in willingly, wanting him in further, our bodies as close as could be.

After some time, and several failed attempts to stop, we broke apart, gasping.

“We may be more comfortable,” he said raggedly, steering me towards a large black leather couch, “over here.”

He sat back against the cushions. I made to join him but he shook his head, held up a hand.

“No, stay there and keep still,” he said. “Let me have a good look at you.”

Suddenly enormously self-conscious, I shrank back and hugged my arms around myself. I desperately wanted to check a mirror, to see what a mess he’d made of my lipstick. I could imagine how ridiculous I looked and I tried to hide my face in the crook of my shoulder, hoping I could create a concealing shadow.

“Saxon,” he rebuked. “What did I just say?”

“You want a good look at me,” I said, a mite sulkily.

“That’s right. At attention, then.”

“I’m not a soldier,” I pointed out, still refractory.

His answer was raised eyebrows and an icy stare. Sighing, I straightened up and clasped my hands behind my back, trying to right the lipstick by pressing and working my lips together before raising my chin.

“Better,” he said. I stood there, feeling like an exhibit at a droid auction, while his gloating eyes gave me a full and thorough once-over. “Turn around.”

Kriff, why did I feel so objectified and yet so incredibly eager for more of it? Facing away from him, I could almost feel the laser of his gaze on the back of my neck, burning down between my shoulder blades, following the curved length of my spine.

“You’re quite pretty underneath that lab coat,” he said, but before I could bristle at his maddening – yet still weirdly arousing – condescension, he was on his feet behind me, literally breathing down my neck.

His fingertips grazed my nape.

“No jewellery,” he noted. “A neck like this doesn’t need it, but all the same…”

“I don’t have any,” I said, shivering at his touch. “My older sister…got all the…heirloom stuff…ah.”

The ‘ah’ was in response to the necklace he gave me, of kisses falling where a chain might lie. He pressed his thumbs into the soft skin and laid his hands on my collarbones; the most delicate stranglehold imaginable. I wished there was a mirror opposite; I longed to see how I looked in his grasp. He kissed the spot beneath my ear, a highly sensitive area, and I twisted my neck, offering more.

Instead, he released me and deftly unzipped my dress, sliding his hands underneath the crumpling fabric to take hold of my shoulders and rub them. He found my mouth with his again and we kissed as my dress fell away, the short sleeves trailing slowly down my arms until he lost patience and pushed them the rest of the way off. Now my breasts in their boring black bra were accessible to him, and he was by no means unaware of the fact, covering them straightaway, weighing them up in his hands, kneading his finger and thumb tips into the profusion of softness. He tore his mouth from mine and nipped at my neck, finding my ear and teasing the spot under my earlobe with his tongue tip.

“Just right,” he buzzed into my ear, giving my breasts a squeeze. “Just what I like.”

“Mmm,” was all I could say, “yeahhhh.”

At that point the skirts of the dress flumped to the floor, as if giving in to a power too great for them to fight. They lay in heaps around my feet, revealing my body in the black underwear and high heels and nothing else.

This made him step away again and order me to turn back to the couch, on the arm of which he now perched, eating me up with his eyes.

“Sorry about the underwear,” I felt compelled to say.

“You have nothing to be sorry about at all,” he said, taking in my hips and the junction of my thighs, chewing on the end of a thumb. “I’ll let you know when you do.” He held up a finger and beckoned.

“Is it safe?” I asked, seeing how his eyes had darkened with pure lust.

“No,” he said, soft and low. “But it’s an order.”

I stepped out of the ruins of the dress, stepped out of my high heeled pumps and moved cautiously towards him. His face, like this, transfigured with desire for me, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I didn’t dare do a single thing to break the spell.

For a horrible moment, the voice of my mother rang in my head… _Make him wait, Sylva…_ but Hux quickly quashed it by rising to his feet and pulling me all the rest of the way in.

I was highly conscious, held tightly against him, of our relative states of dress. It made me feel like some kind of nymphet in one of the old myths, a pleasure giver in thrall to her master. He kissed me hard and stroked my rear curves, getting his fingers inside the elastic and pinching the bare flesh he found there. I draped my arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe, grinding into him, finding a gratifyingly solid bulge against my belly. Growling, he moved his lips to my neck, kissing and biting and sucking his way down until he reached my breasts, at which point he wrenched the bra cups down, exposing them to his hungry mouth.

I could feel the shuddering of his legs and it didn’t surprise me when he fell backwards on to the couch, bringing me down with him. We crawled all over each other, grabbing and clutching, fighting with hands, mouths, legs, arms, to get what we wanted when we wanted it. In the struggle, my bra pinged off and my knickers were yanked down, but I managed a feeble half-unbuttoning of his shirt on my own account.

But he was well ahead of me. While I rubbed my cheek against his chest, darting my tongue out to harden up his pink nipples, he had his hand between my legs, his fingers exploring the slick heat they discovered there.

“So wet,” he muttered triumphantly. “You want this, don’t you, Saxon?”

“Yesyesyes,” I hissed, my fingers working compulsively at his belt buckle.

He slapped my hand away, rolled me on to my back and unbuckled himself, looming over me with one knee on one of my legs, keeping me in my supine position.

“That’s good,” he said, sliding the belt out of its loops with a crack. “Because you’re going to get it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure when, though, as I'm having to go away for a couple of days... will update as soon as I can. Sorry!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No more cliff-hanging necessary - I'm back and so is Hux. Enjoy!

I tried to struggle up on to an elbow, desperate to reach for him, to touch him, but he was having none of it.

“Down,” he commanded through clenched teeth, his fingers making lightning work of ridding himself of his shirt. “You can touch me when I give permission.”

I toyed with the idea of reminding him that we weren’t on duty and perhaps all the General/minion stuff should stay out of the bedroom, but I knew that I would only be saying it for the fun of getting myself into trouble. I had no problem whatsoever with keeping all the General/minion stuff going in the bedroom. It was exactly what I’d been fantasising about all these weeks.

Getting myself into trouble could come later. Besides, it looked as if I had plenty of trouble coming my way already.

He still held his belt, doubled over in his fist, and he stroked the loop of it down the side of my face as his other hand unbuttoned his fly. He shinned out of his trousers and dropped them on to the floor. Cold leather kissed my lips.

Now he was down to his underpants. I drank in his leanness, his tautness, his agile flexibility, like a pale version of that whip he’d brought to the gym. His belt travelled down my clavicle, snaked around my breasts, teased my nipples into agonising stiffness. I gasped. He yanked down his underpants.

Trouble was here. Trouble was pointing straight at me.

“Hands,” he said.

“Wha…?” Fatally distracted by his body, his belt, his erection, I couldn’t process his speech.

“Your hands,” he elucidated impatiently. “Hold them out to me…no, better if you put them above your head…wrists together…yes.”

Stretching himself over me, he took hold of my wrists and held them tight while he wrapped his belt around them, buckling them together so that I couldn’t move them. For the first time my exhilaration became a purer kind of fear and I made an inarticulate sound of protest.

“What’s the matter, Saxon? Aren’t you into this?”

He knelt up, looked sharply into my eyes.

“It’s not that,” I said huskily, because it wasn’t. “It’s just…” I didn’t know how to explain that everyone had heard stories about certain high-ranking Empire staff and what had happened to some of their lovers. My sister knew somebody who’d worked for a time in the Death Star Medcentre, and apparently a lot of hush money had been paid to a lot of people. I didn’t want Hux to think I classed him with those psychopathic sadists but on the other hand…what if he was?

“Too soon?” he hazarded, and for a second I saw a sliver of tenderness somewhere behind the General Sex Beast façade. Was this genuine concern? He unbuckled me. “Well, perhaps it is.” He unwound the coiled leather.

“I don’t mean to…” I made a valiant attempt to explain myself. “I mean…I _would…_ I _will…_ I want to…sometime.”

He half-smiled, shaking his head at me.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Sometime is fine. I was getting ahead of myself. But you have this effect on me…”

Keeping hold of my wrists, he pressed a long and ravishing kiss on to my mouth. I opened up, laid myself bare to him, wanting him to understand that there was no lack of desire for him on my part. We lay now, skin against skin, cupping each other on the couch, squirming together in its leather embrace. Everything felt overheated and feverish, from his breath to the hard, eager length of his erection butting bruisingly against the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.

Releasing my wrists and my mouth simultaneously he growled at me to keep still before pulling my legs wider apart. Once they were spread to his satisfaction, he pushed his erection between them, rubbing it up and down between my labia, getting it coated in my juices.

“I don’t think I can wait,” he muttered, “are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready for _weeks_ ,” I moaned deliriously, making him chuckle and kiss me hard before proceeding with his planned operations.

“I thought as much,” he said, rubbing his thumb against my clit so that I had to arch my back to contain the jolt of intense sensation he provoked.

“Please,” I sighed.

“Oh _Sssith_ ,” he hissed, “you’re _perfect_.” And then he was in me, in one quick sharp thrust that made me yelp and then agree with him wholeheartedly. Perfect. Yes.

He stretched me in exactly the way I had yearned to be stretched; he filled me up as if we had been designed for one another. He was just that little bit too much for comfort, and that was blissful, because it wasn’t comfort I wanted. I didn’t want to be able to drift off and think about whether I had the right herbs for the stew I planned to make later, the way I sometimes did with previous lovers. Hux made this impossible. While he was inside me, I had no choice but to be fully present, fully cognisant of how he felt and moved and how it sparked new and thrilling sensation with each stroke.

He had told me to keep still but I wanted to grab hold of him, to take handfuls of him, to haul myself up and sink my teeth into his shoulder. I raised an experimental hand; he caught it straight away, lacing his fingers with mine, pushing it back down against the upholstery. He didn’t break stroke, maintaining his rhythm of deep, firm thrusts that would have pushed me halfway up the couch if my skin hadn’t been so glued to the leather. Panting hard, we sometimes caught each other’s mouth for more teeth-clashing kisses, or he closed his lips over a nipple and sucked, or nipped at the edge of my neck.

The hand that wasn’t holding me down dipped between my legs at intervals, circling my clit, stroking and teasing while his shaft slid back and forth below. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he didn’t object, purring at the deeper angle this provided for him. Before long, the knot of tension at the base of my solar plexus began to unfurl and the first stirrings of an incipient climax radiated outwards.

“Ohhh,” I wailed, wanting him to know that this blinding ball of intensity was getting brighter and closer and beyond the point of return. “I’m there…I’m…”

“Yes,” he whispered, speeding up, increasing the pressure on my clit. “Go on.”

It burst inside me, sending sparkling, crackling heat along every nerve. I looked into his face and cried, “Yessssssssir,” as I came, and oh kriff, it seemed to go on forever, the long, mad wave of climax and my helpless vocalisations until I felt tears spilling over the side of my face and my voice was no more than a croak.

Hux, still slamming into me for all he was worth, put a hand to my neck and gasped, “Say it…say it again.”

So I had to find some breath from somewhere, summon up some remnants of speech and repeat, “Yes, sir, please, sir,” over and again until he tensed and released a series of hectic panting breaths and his eyes widened as if he had been shot. But I was the one taking the bullet; his seed deep inside me until he had no more to give.

His eyes, like stunned green glass, shut at last and he lay down on top of me, his face pressed into my hair, until our hearts began to slow down and we recovered some fragments of reason.

It was so strange, so sweetly strange, to have Hux’s long, spare body naked and spent and vulnerable, all mixed up in mine, that I felt a throb of something alarmingly like love for him. The sight of his messed up hair and his sweat-shining skin was so novel, so touching that I just wanted to make him happy. I wanted to please him, and I knew exactly what I could say to achieve this.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

He sighed rapturously and kissed the tip of my ear.

“Are you a droid?” he asked sleepily.

“Er, not as far as I know,” I replied with a giggle.

“Because I might suspect you’ve been programmed to say and do and be exactly what I like,” he said. “Like some kind of weapon of erotic warfare.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a very…General-like way to think. But I’m not. Not a droid. No pre-programming. Just a girl who likes a bit of ginger.”

_Shit,_ where did that come from? I stiffened and awaited the onslaught, but he just lay there as if fatally sapped of all energy, until, about half a minute later, he drawled, “They even programmed you to make pert remarks that I’ll have to punish you for. Really top spec. I’ll have to pass on my compliments to the engineers.”

Yikes, what was I supposed to say to this? I wasn’t even sure that he didn’t genuinely suspect me of being some kind of artificial intelligence. And was he annoyed with me? Or not?

“I’m really not a droid,” I said, somewhat anxiously. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

He propped himself up and looked down at me, tired eyed but still uncharacteristically relaxed.

“Don’t bother being sorry now,” he said, running a fingertip along my lower lip until I had to open my mouth and let it in, like a lollipop. “Plenty of time for that later.”

Oh, now, here was something I hadn’t even started to think about: what came next. Was there going to be a next, a later, a tomorrow, a future, however nebulous? The idea of this being a one-off made me want to cry, but I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of illusions. He was General Hux. I was Pharmacopeia Ensign Saxon. It wasn’t, could never be, serious.

“Are you…do you want me to…stay the night, then?” I asked, dreading a dismissive answer, but needing clarification.

“Yes, I think so, don’t you?” he said. “Unless you have some reason to leave.” He frowned. “You don’t, I take it?”

“Oh, no,” I assured him. “My shift starts at eight tomorrow morning. I don’t have to be anywhere before that.”

“Good,” he said, lying back down and yawning. “Because I might be a little drained just now, but I have all sorts of plans for you.” After a short silence, he said, with slightly studied casualness, “So there’s nobody else?”

“Boyfriends, you mean? No.”

“Because there can’t be, you know,” he said. “The security implications…”

“Ah, right,” I said with a little laugh. “The security implications. Sure.” I paused. “Security implications of what?”

“Don’t be dense, Saxon. I can’t share my lovers with other people. And if anyone approaches you, in any kind of way – friendly or romantic – you are to tell me straight away and I’ll have Sentient Resources put them through deep vetting.”

“What?” This was beginning to sound rather alarming.

“Spies, Saxon. Republican agents, trying to get close to you because you’re close to me. Looking for information, blackmail material, pillow talk, so on. I mean, I’ll do what I can to keep our association under the radar, but you know what this base is like. The second people stop working they start gossipping. It’s why I work everyone so hard.”

“Ah, right. I won’t say anything to anyone, though. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I should hope not, but you must promise to tell me if anybody makes any kind of advance to you. Yes?”

“Yes, sir. And by the way, my name is Sylva. I mean, it might be appropriate now…”

I was hoping for a similar confidence on his part, but it didn’t come, because his massive holo-screen let out an alert tone and Hux leapt up from the couch and began looking for his clothes.

“Get into the fresher,” he ordered, pulling me up and shooing me towards the ensuite door. “Go on. I’ll join you when I’m…go _on_.”

And so I had to leave him there, trying to rub a lipstick smear from his shirt with a matted lock of hair hanging over his eyes, and make a dash to the shower while the holoscreen blared itself into a frenzy.

What in the galaxy had I got myself into?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Unadulterated smut for now, but some plot will occur at some point in the future...

The ensuite fresher was _huge_ and it had a bath – more like a small swimming pool actually - which attracted me immediately after weeks of cramped ensign-quarter showering. I wondered if Hux would mind if I…?

Probably better to wait and ask. I sat down and switched on an entertainment holo-system on the opposite wall, but all the titles I could find were old Empire-era training vids about battle strategy. Kriff, Hux even worked in the tub. No wonder he was so ready for a bit of horizontal R&R.

Mmm. I shut my eyes and let the sense-memories flood back, enjoying the sting and the stickiness between my legs that proved they had all really happened.

The whoosh of the sliding door interrupted my reverie and I stood up quickly, suddenly self-conscious about my nakedness. Hux, back in shirt and trousers, strode over to the mirror and began combing his hair and splashing his face.

“I have to leave for a short while,” he said, running a hand over his chin area and frowning at the insubordinate bristles he found there. “I won’t be long. Feel free to use the facilities.”

“This bath is big enough for two,” I remarked. “Big enough for eight, even.”

“Why don’t you run one for yourself,” he suggested, spraying himself with some kind of maddeningly delicious cologne. “And I’ll join you when I get back.” He dropped a quick kiss on my brow as he passed on his way out. “Oh.” He turned back to me, apparently in afterthought. “And I’m afraid I’ll have to lock you in here.”

“What?”

“A precaution,” he said. “Nobody should be in here if I’m not. Security risk.”

“But I…?”

“But if I lock you in here you can’t mess with anything,” he continued. “That holo-system on the wall isn’t linked to anything significant. You can watch as many episodes of _Tarkin Tactics_ as you like.” He gave my protesting pout an answering hard stare. “Well, it’s that or I boot you out, my dear. Your choice.”

“I guess I’ll stay then,” I said. “But you promise you won’t be long?”

“Trust me, I have no intention of spending any longer away from your body than strictly necessary,” he said darkly, then the door whirred shut behind him with an ominous click.

I tried it, just in case, but it was definitely locked. Just as well I didn’t suffer from claustrophobia, but since this bathroom was about three times the size of my own living quarters, it would have to be a very selective type.

There was nothing for it but to run a giant bath full of the most efficient restorative muscle-soak known to science and wait for Hux to get back. I lay back in the wonderfully hot water, replaying the evening’s events against my closed eyelids, trying to put them in order and analyse them frame by frame.

I smiled to myself, imagining Hux in this very bath, fantasising about me after our interesting week of gym encounters. The thought was truly delightful. He must have tried to resist at first, I theorised, then the medcentre episode had tilted the axis again and he had decided to put the moves on me. I wondered what he would have done if I’d turned him down. Should I have turned him down? My mother’s voice rang again in my ears, but then I remembered my last night out with Riina before coming to Starkiller, and her advice. “If you see a good one, go for it. I know Mama wouldn’t agree, but life’s too short for eyelash batting and fan dropping.”

Riina had been right. I hadn’t made Hux wait, and he seemed pretty keen for whatever this was to continue, so two fingers up to Mama and her ancient mores.

But then again, there was this need for secrecy. Was it really so necessary? Plenty of top ranking personnel were married or in relationships and nobody seemed to think they had to hide the fact. Why did Hux? An uneasy feeling that it was somehow something to do with Kylo Ren wouldn’t let me go. Was it a bad idea to ask Hux? Maybe not tonight.

Tonight was for pleasure.

The water was just starting to cool when the door opened again to admit a tense-looking Hux. His expression relaxed as his eyes landed on me and he began to undress.

“Having a bath is such a luxury,” I said. “You’re lucky.”

“I don’t think luck has much to do with it,” he said. “Unless you think I achieved my rank by chance.”

“Of course not,” I said quickly, suspecting Hux of looking for reasons to chastise me. “I’m sure you deserve it.”

“Yes, I do,” he said, coming closer, looming over me as he removed his jacket and made a start on his shirt. “The question is, what do you deserve, Saxon?”

I sat up and prodded the touchpad behind the tub.

“I deserve more hot water,” I said, “and a naked General to keep me company in here.”

He smiled. Score!

“Fortunately,” he said, stripping off hastily, “both can be provided.”

A cascade of hot water poured into the bath at the same time as Hux climbed over the rim.

“I need this,” he sighed, sliding in behind me and capturing me in his arms. “A long, hot bath is my reward to myself after a taxing day. At least, it was, until I found something even better.” He buried his face in my neck and breathed in my steamy, soapy skin.

I leant back against his chest, nestling happily within his legs as the steam rose to envelop us.

“Why did you have to leave?” I asked dreamily.

His hands, which had been cupping my breasts, closed tight, pinching at my nipples.

“You don’t need to know that,” he said. “I might as well make it clear right away that I won’t be talking about any operational matters with you.”

Ouch.

“I wasn’t to know it was an operational matter,” I said huffily. “It might have been anything, for all I knew. Kylo Ren might have fallen off a catwalk or something.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “If only,” he muttered. “Look, let’s leave Kylo Ren, the Order, Starkiller Base and all such topics out of the bedroom, shall we?”

“This is the bathroom,” I pointed out, feeling, as I said it, that I was pushing my luck several light years too far. As it happened, I wasn’t wrong.

“All right,” he said, “you’ve had this coming long enough now. Let’s deal with this attitude of yours. Stand up.”

His tone brooked no refusal, although I was dying to ask him why and what he had in mind. My lovely lazy sensual haze dispelled immediately and the thrill of being ordered about by Hux recommenced zipping through my body. I rose from the foamy depths and stood up, shivering a little as the colder air of the bathroom chilled my skin and tightened my nipples.

“Now bend forward and grip the side of the bath,” he said. “What are you waiting for? Don’t make this harder on yourself.”

I had to turn slightly in order to obey, which gave me an interesting view in the mirrored wall over the sinks. I watched myself tilt over to grab hold of the rolled edge of the tub, saw how my spine sloped down to push my buttocks up so that they were the highest part of my body, and an extremely vulnerable target for anybody’s dark designs.

“Sir,” I said, my voice a little fluttery, “are you going to…?”

I watched his reflection stand up and position itself behind me, watched the expression on his face as he feasted his eyes on what was exposed to him and I knew exactly what he had in mind.

“Am I going to…?” he parrotted softly, running a finger over the curve of my bottom then pressing it into the tightened skin. My shivers now had nothing to do with the cold. “What do you think, Saxon? _I_ know what you need, and I suspect you want it too, or you wouldn’t be trying so hard to provoke me. But I’d like to hear it from you. What should I do to you? What do you think you deserve?”

Oh, _damn_ him, he was going to make me ask for it. I should have known…

“I think that’s for you to decide, sir,” I said meekly, congratulating myself on what I considered to be a perfect answer.

He patted my backside encouragingly.

“Of course it is,” he said. “And it will be. But I’d still like to hear your thoughts.”

A million sassy possibilities flew through my head, all of which I had to regrettably discard, much as I wanted to see what happened if I said them. Besides, I had to admit to myself, our interests were pretty much in tune here. If only I could get him to…

I wiggled my hips, hoping this might spur him on and obviate the odious necessity of voicing my desires aloud.

In a way, it did, because he delivered two sharp smacks to each buttock, but then he stopped, leant over me, hissed, “Say it, Saxon.”

I let out a gusty sigh.

“All right. I deserve a good spanking, sir, if that’s what you deem appropriate.”

I saw, for the first time, a true unguarded lighting up of his face, and it was a priceless sight, worth every humiliating word of the sentence I had had to speak to bring it out.

“Appropriate,” he said, forcing his expression back into severity, “is exactly what I deem it, Saxon. Maintain position.”

I held on tight and braced myself.

He started slow, but hard. Kriff, I hadn’t accounted for how much more this stung on a wet bottom and I was letting out little gasps and rolling on the balls of my feet almost from the get-go. I had experience of a little light slap and tickle with previous lovers, but they weren’t people I’d taken particularly seriously and it hadn’t felt real. Hux was different. Hux demanded to be taken seriously, even when he was having fun. Especially, perhaps, when he was having fun. This added an entire new dimension of eroticism to the experience; I could feel an intensity of submission that I hadn’t even realised I wanted.

He spanked me relentlessly and without quarter, telling me periodically that I needed this and had been begging for it, until my behind was hotter than the bathwater and proportionately sore.

He kept on until I let out a little whimper of discomfort to try and distract myself from breaking position and reaching round to protect my poor suffering bum.

“Is it sinking in?” he gloated, but he stayed his hand and waited a moment for me to collect myself.

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“Your legs are too close together,” he chastened. “Spread them for me. Good.”

I parted them immediately, approving of this development. He slid his hand between my legs and stroked my inner thighs. His palm was hot from its repeated sharp impact with my bottom. He drew his warm fingers slowly along my parted slit, finding my clit, circling it.

“This was meant to be a punishment,” he said. “Why are you wet?”

I couldn’t resist.

“Um, we’re in a bath? Sir?”

He tutted, patted my open lips smartly then withdrew and gave me a volley of hard, stinging smacks all over my bottom and thighs until I had to beg for mercy.

“Please, sir, I can’t…” I gasped, milliseconds from breaking position and falling forward on to my knees.

“All right, that’ll do,” he said, panting himself. His hand returned between my legs and he worked me, slowly and surely, with his fingers until I was dizzy and flying. I laid my head on the edge of the bath and consigned my trembling body to his keeping, no longer mistress of myself. The heat and tenderness behind had set me on fire and I moved against his hand with a kind of primitive desperation that was beyond any sense of decorum or shame. He was in control of me, and I just had to accept it.

I came so hard that my legs gave way and I flopped with a splash back into the now-tepid bathwater.

“Dear me,” he said, catching me, holding me close through the aftershocks. “We’ll have to work on your stamina. Those gym sessions weren’t enough, apparently.” But he kissed me until I could see again, a kiss both fierce and gentle, and I knew he was utterly delighted with his handiwork.


	10. Chapter 10

He waited until my brain matched up with my body again, then he went to sit on a little ledge at the far end of the tub, set half way up the bath. I had to follow him, since he was holding my hand, but there was no room for me on the seat. Instead, I knelt in front of him, between his knees.

“Now if you’ve recovered,” he said, drawing my attention to his eye-watering erection, “there’s something you can do for me.”

It wasn’t difficult to guess what, but I was wary, suspecting that he might taste of soap. All the same, I did as he directed and bent to my work. Tentatively, I ran the tip of my tongue up the shaft. The flavour was neutral, neither soapy nor salty, so I went further and took it into my mouth.

I sealed my lips around his cock and grasped the base tightly in my fist. My reward for this was a soft moan, making me look up and bask in the expression of seventh-heaven rapture on his face. Motivated to keep it there, I let my tongue push and prod as I sucked, bringing him a little further in with each bob of my head.

“Oh you little…” he gasped, clutching a handful of my hair, pushing my head down, making me suck harder, squeeze tighter.

I upped my pace, starting to feel an ache around my jaw, wanting to finish the job before it became a real issue. I moaned over his cock, hoping he would find the vibrations pleasurable, which he certainly seemed to. Sucking, squeezing, cupping his balls in my free hand and massaging them for all I was worth, I took my cue from his frantic little vocalisations and the increasing pressure of his hands on me.

My eyes were watering and I was close to gagging, but I knew he was almost there so I slipped a crafty finger on to his perineum and gave it a good rub. He pulled my hair so tightly I squealed and let out an incoherent growl that started with “Youahhh” and ended with salty liquid hitting the back of my throat in a steady series of spurts.

As his grip on my hair relaxed, I drew my mouth slowly up his softening shaft, gave it a final affectionate lick and released it, swallowing his seed down. I had never loved the taste, but somehow I didn’t seem to mind this time. Indeed, this was the first blow job I had ever given wholeheartedly, without drifting off into distant mental pastures. What was he doing to me?

“You’ve done that before,” he accused, looking down at me severely.

I nodded, my head resting against his knee. “Once or twice,” I admitted.

“And you’ll be doing it again,” he predicted, then he pinched my cheek hard. “But not with anyone else.”

“Suits me,” I said.

“Good.” He put two fingertips against my lips, parting them, making me take them on to my tongue. “Because this mouth belongs to me now.” He removed his fingers, took my face in his hands and kissed me into a swoon. “And not just your mouth,” he whispered.

He slid off the ledge and we lay entangled and embracing in the rapidly cooling bathwater until even our combined body heat couldn’t stop our teeth from chattering.

“Come on, out you get, I’m famished,” he said, dragging me upright and reaching for the bath towels.

A droid prepared food for us and we ate it from a tray on the couch, wrapped in towels while Hux flipped between music channels on the audio system and simultaneously read through about a hundred pages of intel on his datapad. And I’d thought I was a fast reader.

“You never switch off, do you?” I said when he took a break to ask the droid for more water.

“I thought I just did,” he replied, smirking at me. “Or do you call that work?”

“Not work exactly,” I said. “Though it was certainly hard.”

“Yes.” His smirk broadened. “It certainly was.” He stroked my face for a moment, then moved his hand down to pull the towel away from my breasts. He stared at them as if mesmerised, then said, “Actually, I’m going to have to ask you to get into bed.”

“Right now? OK, if you…”

“I have some work to finish and I won’t be able to with you sitting so close to me,” he said. “You’re much too distracting.”

I pouted at him. “You’re sending me to bed without any supper?”

“What are you talking about? You’ve just had supper.” He kissed me, ruffling my damp hair. “Now do as you’re told and get into bed. I’ll join you when I’m ready. And you’d better be naked when I do.”

I was naked when he finally came to bed. I was also asleep, having been lulled by exhaustion and the peaceful hum of the holoscreen, coupled with Hux’s occasional low-voiced communications to the night duty staff on the bridge. His bed was curtained off in a corner of the open plan quarters, an emperor-sized affair with a firm mattress and low, flat pillows. I spread myself out like a starfish and stared at the ceiling until I drifted into dreams.

I awoke with a jolt, panicking at my unfamiliar surroundings and the clear presence of somebody else very close to me until I remembered where I was and with whom.

“Sorry to wake you,” murmured Hux, leaning over me from his perch on the edge of the bed. He was wearing a loosely tied black silk robe; it hung open at his chest, brushing lightly against my breasts. “But you’re taking up all the space. Do you always sleep like that, right in the middle of the bed?”

“Oh…sorry.” I made to move over, but he put a hand on my hip, holding me in position.

“Of course, I could just get on top of you,” he suggested. “I think I’d probably find that quite comfortable.”

I was still heavy, body and mind, with fatigue but his touch, his nearness, coupled with my nakedness, charmed my sensuality out of hiding. I felt my nipples peak and my stomach tighten with desire, longing for him to come closer. My legs were spread, my arms flung either side of my head. I was in the perfect defenceless position for him to take advantage.

“Mm, I want you to,” I whispered, and he didn’t need telling twice.

He straddled me and pressed his body against mine, covering me with his leanness and warmth until our mouths met too and we kissed slowly and languidly while he rocked his hips against me, getting me ready, rubbing his hard length into the wetness between my thighs. He held on to my upper arms for purchase, keeping himself steady and me pinned down. I bent my knees, opening my legs wider, arched my back, raised my pelvis to meet him. Together we ground slowly against one another, getting harder, getting wetter, getting as ready as anyone could ever be. His tongue probed deeper, tasting every inch of my mouth, showing me what I could expect lower down when the time came. Oh, when would that time come? Couldn’t it be now?

I shifted my hips, tried to lure him to my opening, but he adjusted himself so that he was maddeningly positioned across my clit, rubbing and stroking up and down, side to side, slowly, always at his own chosen pace.

I tried to shake my head free so I could break the kiss and gasp out a plea, but he couldn’t be dislodged, his mouth clamped firmly over mine.

At last he took pity on my squirming and whimpering. He scoured my mouth one last, long time, then raised his face and looked me in the eye.

“Do you want me to fuck you, Saxon?” he asked, and my reply was an inchoate mess of panting breaths and yesyesyessir.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl who needed it so badly,” he taunted, but then he let go of my arms and reached underneath me, taking a bottom cheek in each hand and spreading them so that my vagina was as wide open and exposed as it could possibly be. I raised myself to meet his thick, hard shaft, sighing with satisfaction as it filled and stretched me. Still he teased me, edging in inch by hard-won inch, making me beg for him all the way.

At this slow pace, he seemed to get bigger and harder as he slid in, until the feeling of fullness was such that he seemed to occupy my entire lower body. He held on to my arse cheeks, keeping them spread as he moved in, then retreated another inch, then moved a little further, then retreated again. All the while I was rotating my hips mindlessly, increasingly frantic to have him all the way in until I wrapped my arms around his neck, kicked up my legs and tried to force him further.

“Hands off,” he said sternly and I had to return them above my head. “You won’t get what you want if you don’t behave yourself.”

“Ohhh,” I moaned, in a tormenting mid-space between wanting and having, not empty but not full enough. “You’re so cruel.”

“You love it,” he told me, and I knew he was right. There was something about the way he treated me that drove all reason out of me and replaced it with pure primitive lust. “That’s why I had to have you.” He stopped, halfway inside me, and bent to suck at my nipples for an agonisingly long time.

“Please fuck me, sir,” I begged, my fists clenched, my toes curled, everything tensed and desperate for him.

“There’s no rush,” he said, diverting for a delicate, leisurely tonguing of my neck and every erogenous spot beneath my ear. “I could keep this up all night.”

He was serious. He could.

I let my muscles relax, surrendering to the inevitable. Nothing was going to happen until he wanted it to. There was no point fighting a will this indomitable.

And this was the signal he had been waiting for, this moment of absolute submission.

“Good girl,” he whispered, and he seated himself all the way in, holding himself still there so that I could bask in the sensation I had so longed for.

He lifted one of my legs across his thigh to keep me absolutely open, then eased into a slow and controlled rhythm, making me feel every tiny iota of movement, every little flicker of every sensitive nerve ending. He gave, and I received, and what I was receiving was immense, almost too much to process. It was the gradual trickle that would lead, increment by increment, to a devastating flood.

He would take me just to the edge of that flood, then withdraw and change position – sometimes just a little alteration in the angle, sometimes turning me over and entering again from behind, or from the side, or with me straddling him. He played me like a master musician with an instrument he knew in every intimate detail until it became almost frightening and I wondered, in my midnight delirium, if he was in fact some kind of Force sensitive using arcane magical powers on me.

It might have been hours or it might have been minutes or it might have been days later when he put his mouth to my ear and rasped, “Do you understand?”

And yes. I understood.

“I’m yours,” I uttered, helpless and defeated from being kept on this edge so expertly and for so long.

“Clever girl. Exactly.”

And then he let me come, thrusting into me until we were both thrown over that edge into a dark vortex of overwhelming pleasure.

Afterwards, barely able to move, I lay cradled against him, my cheek pressed into his shoulder, his lips against my forehead. We were soaking wet, stuck to the sheets, still shaking, still dizzy for the longest time.

“Sir,” I whispered, and I wanted to ask him something, or say something to him, but I couldn’t think and the words lay beyond my reach.

“Shh, go to sleep,” he said, cupping my bottom and pulling me closer.

Presuming it to be an order, I obeyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, anyone got a cigarette?


	11. Chapter Eleven

If Hux’s alarm hadn’t been so obnoxiously loud, I’d probably have slept through it. It seemed to take me hours to get my eyes properly open, all the while coming to consciousness of hitherto unknown levels of ache and soreness in my body.

“Oh kriff,” I moaned, hiding beneath a pillow. “I can’t go to work. I’m dead.”

Hux removed the pillow and smirked down at me.

“You don’t look dead,” he remarked. “Although, perhaps not far from it. Come on, let’s shower.”

He dragged my unwilling body from the bed and into the fresher. The droids pointedly ignored us, busy preparing breakfast, which was lucky, because the sight of me would probably have short-circuited them. I cringed at the thought of Hux seeing me in this condition, even though it was him that was responsible for it.

On the bright side, I was still here. He hadn’t, as I had half-feared he might, kicked me out after sex. And he did seem quite happy to have company in the shower, judging by the way he pulled me into a long good morning kiss as soon as the water was running. I gave thanks to the celebrated fellow pharmacist who had invented antiplax, making it no longer necessary to brush teeth morning and night. At least I didn’t have my breath to worry about.

I relaxed into the kiss, feeling some of my stiffness melt in the twin cascades of steam and passion. As it deepened, I began to wonder, despite the discomfort between my legs, about shower sex. How did people do it? Weren’t they afraid of slipping over? Was it possible, given the height differential between me and Hux? Or…?

He broke the kiss, filled his palm with shampoo from a dispenser and began massaging my head with it. I leant back against him, sighing with pleasure.

“You got into quite a state last night,” he said, his long fingers working up a fine lather. “I think you’re going to need a lot of attention.”

“Oh?” I tipped my head up to look at him. Suds slid down my neck, dissolving as they hit the slopes of my breasts.

He began to wash his own hair. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t expect me to do it. I’d been ready. But then this was probably all part of the control freakery.

“Yes,” he said, rinsing out the shampoo. “You need to be thoroughly cleaned.” He pumped some liquid soap into his hand. “Especially here.” The soap was spread over my breasts and applied conscientiously to every square inch of skin. As he attended to me from behind, he kissed my neck and shoulders, and his cock swelled and pressed into my back.

_Could we…?_ I shouldn’t want it, it wasn’t a good idea, it would burn like fire…but…

“And here,” he said, soaping my bottom. When he squeezed it, I felt a little answering tingle leftover from last night’s spanking, deep in the tissues. Perhaps I would avoid sitting on any hard chairs today.

“And…definitely…here,” he continued, working his way up my thighs before foaming all over my pubic triangle. The tops of my thighs ached as if they’d been in some kind of clamp, my clit was sore with overuse and when he edged one finger inside me I felt the rawness of too much friction, but still I couldn’t help wanting him to carry on and I spread my legs invitingly wider. The hot water gushed down my legs and streamed into my delta; he sucked at my neck, just where my hair would cover it, and added another finger.

“I can’t believe you,” he whispered. “Are you really ready for more?”

I rocked my pelvis, grinding against his exploring hand in reply. Yes, it would hurt. No, I didn’t care.

“Get on your hands and knees,” he commanded gutturally.

So this was how it would work. He was probably right that we couldn’t really do it upright without somebody getting seriously injured. I dropped down on all fours, resting my head on my forearms, keeping my arse high in the air.

Hux was on me straight away, slapping my thighs wider apart, entering me quickly and without hesitation. We both knew it was going to hurt, so the speed was necessary and I was grateful for it, much as I hissed and bit down on my hand. Now he was in, there was no way back.

He braced an arm beneath me and took it fast and hard, jolting me forward over the slippery base of the shower, making me gasp and grunt with each strong thrust. My brain, revelling in the way I was being treated, helped my body to overcome its discomfort. Soon it didn’t hurt any more. Soon all I was feeling was exhilarated arousal, imagining myself the way he saw me now, bum up, thighs wide, everything open and surrendered to him. He took hold of a hank of wet hair and pulled it – not painfully hard but enough to make my scalp tingle and my whole being respond to the sensation of being totally under his hand.

I came, water dripping into my mouth as I cried out. He had been waiting for me, and he released his own climax, keeping tight inside me until I had taken it all.

There was nothing I could do after that but lie there, full length, in the shower, letting the jets hose me down while Hux staggered to his feet and washed himself.

“Don’t be too long,” he admonished, looking down at me with amusement. “I don’t want you falling back to sleep.” He dropped into a squat, kissed me sweetly and stepped out of the shower.

I lay there, watched him dry himself off, then comb his hair, then shave.

“Out,” he commanded, heading to the door wrapped in a towel. Annoyingly, he switched off the jets and I sat up sharply, feeling the sudden chill. “Or breakfast will be cold.”

Swearing under my breath, I reached for a towel and made a stab at preparing myself for breakfast. It was at that point I realised I had nothing to wear but last night’s evening dress. I really didn’t fancy putting all that on again. I groaned, checked my dark-ringed eyes in the mirror and tried to look like a person who hadn’t spent most of the night underneath a rampant General. I didn’t succeed.

When I joined him at the breakfast table, he was in full General regalia, a little red-rimmed around the eyes but otherwise standard spick-and-span to the max Hux. I felt somewhat underdressed, shuffling into the seat opposite him in a towel two-piece and turban.

“I have nothing to wear,” I informed him, looking down at a plate of eggs and peppers. Where was the caf? I really needed…ah. Hux, anticipating me, took up the jug and poured me a large one.

“You have your gown,” he said unhelpfully.

“You want to condemn me to the Turbolift of Shame?”

He laughed.

“You can use my private elevator,” he offered. “But it’ll only take you as far as your lobby. You’ll have to negotiate the corridors to your quarters by yourself. Don’t worry. I don’t suppose you’ll be the only one.” He shook his head at my dismay. “All right, you can borrow my outdoor cape.”

I sighed with relief. This was good news on two points – it would cover my embarrassment, _and_ I would have to return it, which suggested an extension to our liaison.

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s sweet of you.”

“Not something I’m often called,” he said, seemingly rather nonplussed by this.

“Not even by Kylo Ren?” I dared. The look he gave me hit my right in my solar plexus, reminding me how sore my muscles were down there.

“I thought I’d made it clear that we don’t mention that name in here,” he reprimanded.

“Sorry.” I helped myself to toast from the rack and piled the eggs and peppers on top. I was too hungry to care about formalities.

“Sorry, _sir_ ,” he insisted, and I was reminded of the question that had eluded me the night before.

“Oh, I remember what I was going to ask you. Are we, I mean, if this is a _thing…_ ” I shot him a questioning glance, a little afraid of what his response might be. “I don’t know if it is, I guess that’s up to you, but I’d…um…”

“Saxon, you should consider taking classes in expressing yourself with clarity,” he said, but with a hint of a smile. “I’m afraid I can’t answer until I hear the question.”

He could see that I was floundering, though, and he helped me out, leaning forward as I sought refuge in my mug of caf.

“I’m quite happy with my decision,” he said. “I’ve tried this a few times with various people and had no real desire to pursue it after the first night. But I had a feeling it would be different with you and it was. We seem…I hope you’ll agree…quite compatible.”

“I do agree,” I breathed, hanging on these words, wanting more of them.

“So I’ve merged your work schedule with mine,” he continued, opening a file on his datapad, “so that I know when you’re free. I can have a word with Sentient Resources about matching up our leave cycles, although of course I rarely take time off. Perhaps once the weapon is well underway…”

I stared at him, thrown for a loop by all this.

“Of course, you won’t be able to contact me because you don’t have the necessary clearances, so I’ll send word to you when I’m available. I hope you won’t consider it disrespectful if I ask you to keep this arrangement between us at this stage. As I’ve mentioned, there are people I’d prefer didn’t know about my personal life for reasons I can’t explain to you yet. Hopefully at some point… Are you all right? You’re a little pale.”

“Um…I’m fine…just…” I let out a nervous little laugh. “This reminds me of being offered the Pharma job here. Terms and conditions.” I shook my head. “It’s a bit…official.”

He sighed impatiently. “You understand, Saxon, that my strategic position dictates a certain level of discretion. If you want someone to take you dancing at the Atrium Diner on a Friday night, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

“I know. I don’t want that.”

His tone softened. “But you want this?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“I want you, sir. Oh, _that_ was the question!” I interrupted the rather misty-eyed smile my declaration had provoked from him. “Do I have to call you sir? All the time? Even when we’re…?”

He picked up the hand that had just put down my mug and kissed my fingertips.

“For now, Saxon,” he said, “it suits me very well. Now eat up.” He consulted his datapad. “You don’t have long before your shift begins.”


	12. Chapter 12

Hux’s turbolift was twice as fast as the cattle class equivalent, which was just as well, as Hux had to spend ages uploading me to the security software – face, fingerprint, voice, and that was just for starters. He put his outdoor cape on to my shoulders, kissed me a firm goodbye and shoved me in.

I drew the cape around me, enjoying its solid weight. It was a bit like having Hux himself on my back. Less enjoyably it slowed my progress along the warren of corridors that housed the ensigns’ quarters. Several people passed me by and clearly thought I looked a bit weird in an officer’s outdoor cape and bare feet – I hadn’t been able to face putting the high heels back on. Still, Hux was right about one thing. Some of those people were still in eveningwear, darting red-facedly from one quarter to another. Good thing we’d done that sexual health screening.

I made it to the Pharmacopeia on time somehow, despite the massive temptation to lie down full length on my bunk and stay there forever. My efficiency, once ensconced in the workplace, was not at its height. I was tired, aching and utterly, madly in lust. My concentration was shot to pieces. Twice Sher had to stop me before I gave out the wrong prescription. I was in desperate need of rest.

I was also in desperate need of something else.

I needed somebody to talk to, to whisper and scream-laugh and give a blow-by-blow account of it all to. In the cold light of day, it seemed almost pointless to have shagged Hux when there was nobody I could sit down on the rec deck and tell about it. I had to content myself with an imaginary conversation with Riina in my head. The conversation was long and brought up sense memories that weakened me at the knees every so often. I took a lot of fresher breaks that morning.

When Colli clocked on after lunch, it was all I could do not to throw my arms wide and cry, “Guess where I woke up this morning??!!!!”. But I resisted. I had to, or I would never be waking up there again.

“Where did you get to last night?” she asked, relieving me at the counter so I could go and spend the afternoon in the lab.

“What do you mean? I was at the party.”

“I didn’t see you after you had that dance with Kylo Ren. I looked everywhere for you.”

“Oh, did you?” I shrugged, trying to look mystified.

“Yes, and so did he.”

“What?”

“Kylo Ren. He was looking for you. Asked me if I’d seen you.”

I was thrown by this and could do nothing but gawp at her.

“Are you OK?” she asked. “You don’t look well. Do you think…?”

But whatever she was about to ask me had to be cut off, because Kylo Ren himself turned up at the door and I ran for the store cupboard.

Hiding behind the door, I heard his voice echoing out from that metal helmet.

“Where’s your colleague? The other girl that works here?”

“Ensign Saxon?”

“Yes, her.”

“I’m afraid she isn’t feeling too well today, sir, and she’s taken the afternoon off.” I was in awe of Colli for lying to him. Everyone said he’d know, and force-choke the truth out of you. But he didn’t seem to detect her dishonesty, because he just grunted and stomped off.

“Kriff almighty, Janyss, you didn’t have to lie for me,” I said, sticking my head around the door once the coast was clear. “How did you know he’d believe you?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “He doesn’t use the Force twenty four seven, does he? Just in extreme situations.”

“All the same, that was brave. I owe you one.”

“Great, so you can tell me what’s going on then.”

My heart sank. I needed to get back into the store cupboard. There was an intimate topical ointment I was very keen to locate and avail myself of.

“Truth,” I said, sidling up close to her so I didn’t have to raise my voice. “I don’t know. I don’t know why Kylo Ren is on my back. I guess it might be because I blew him off at the party – you saw us dancing, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and he looked so angry when the dance was over! Whoa.” She whistled admiringly. “You really turned him down?”

“What can I say, I don’t like the guy. He’s no fun.”

She laughed. “I get that. But…General Hux is?”

I had to turn away to hide the catastrophic wall of blush taking over my face.

“General Hux is a dick too,” I said, mentally apologising to him, and also mentally hoping he didn’t accept my mental apology and was planning to mentally put me over his mental knee.

“Really? But all the dicks want to dance with you? What are you, some kind of dick femme fatale?”

I had to laugh, and remind myself to spend more time with Colli. It was a great pity I couldn’t tell her what was going on; I had a feeling her take on it would be hilarious.

“I guess I am. I’ll add it to my resume,” I said. “Kriff, I’ll be late for my lab session. I’d better go. If you see Kylo Ren or General Hux please give them an overdose of Extermalouse for me, will you?”

“You bet,” she said, grinning at me as I picked up my lab coat and headed into the depths of the Pharmacopeia.

The rest of the day was a write-off, work-wise. I alternated between vivid memories of my long hot night and attempts to identify why I felt so emotionally off-kilter. Why, when everything had been so intense and thrilling, did I feel slightly _wrong_ about it, deep-down?

I tried to analyse it. (I should have been analysing the chemical constituents of a new nootropic but I couldn’t concentrate. Ironic.).

It wasn’t the sex. The sex was A1, eleven out of ten, absolutely amazing in every possible way.

It wasn’t the emotional connection. Hux was Hux, which would be enough to put most people off, but I could sense that there was something behind all the iron self-discipline and repression, something that just needed its sweet time to develop. I was willing to give as much of that sweet time as it took.

It wasn’t even the professed need for secrecy. I trusted that Hux had good reasons for it, and that he would let me into them in time.

The power differential was perhaps troubling. He had it all; I had none of it. Then again, I found that hot. Once more, it came down to trusting him not to abuse it, unless it was in the fun way.

So what was eating me? (And why couldn’t it be him?)

I found my answer whilst reading a departmental memo: “Arrangements for screening programs: 2nd sector”. The word punched me in the gut. _Arrangement._

It was the word Hux had used. Not relationship, not, I don’t know, liaison or connection or affair or any number of titillating alternatives. Arrangement. Emotionless, businesslike, equivocal.

The word set all my discomfiting thoughts tumbling loose as if I’d shaken them from a tree. The arrangement was that I went running when he clicked his fingers. The arrangement was that I asked no questions and made no demands. The arrangement was that I did what he wanted, when he wanted it.

The arrangement was that I was his unpaid whore.

It was a slap in the face. I had to go and sit in the fresher, for the nth time that day, to catch my breath and let the heat of shame die down.

“Go and get a decent night’s sleep,” suggested Sher, with mild reproach, when my shift finally ended. “You’ve been as much use as a jelly light-sabre today. I don’t know what’s got into you.”

I did!

“Sorry, chief,” I muttered. “I am quite tired. Too much partying.”

“Just as well there won’t be another party for another millennium or so then,” he said. “Go on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I was looking forward to an extended period of unconsciousness as I crossed the lobby towards my corridor but, to my horror, Kylo Ren approached me from the other side of the landing. Why in all the galaxy would _he_ be on this floor?

“Feeling better, I take it?” he said, drawing close.

“Wh….oh…no, not really,” I flustered, remembering Colli’s excuses for me earlier and stage-coughing. “Just been down to Pharma for some painkillers…”

“Really? Can I have one? My head’s been pounding all day.”

He held out a hand. I knew he thought he’d caught me out.

“Maybe take off that heavy helmet then, sir?” I replied snippily, pretending to feel in my pockets. “Oh…I feel a bit…”

One of my most useful skills is the ability to make myself convincingly nauseous at will. It’s come to my aid in many a dodgy situation, and this one was dodgier than most. I called up the memory of the colony of decomposing womp rats I’d once found in the cellar of an abandoned home in my childhood compound and felt the colour drain from my face and the acids bubble horribly in the pit of my stomach. Any minute now…

“Ohh,” I moaned, doubling over. “I think I’m gonna…”

He stepped back smartly.

“Kriff,” he snarled, just as I splashed the rubberised floor with my lunchtime noodles, inches from his feet. “Get this cleaned up!” A droid whirred into range and Ren stormed off, apparently his only mode of making an exit.

Later, lying in my bunk after a long medicated shower, I thought about the ‘arrangement’ again. If I went along with it, would I kill any self-respect I had? I wasn’t sure I had any, to be honest, but perhaps it was one of those things you didn’t know you possessed until somebody challenged it.

But if I didn’t go along with it, how would I cope with knowing that I could be with Hux, could be in his arms, in his bed, but had chosen not to be? I didn’t think I had that kind of strength.

All the same, the thought of him maybe trying to win me back was a pleasant one, something to dream about when sleep claimed me, as it surely would within the next few seconds.

Knowing my luck, he wouldn’t try though. Just roll his eyes and seek out some other sucker…some other sucker to suck him…oh Sith, I was tired. Too tired. All I could do was wait and see…and sleep…

The next few days contained a lot of waiting and no seeing. I heard nothing from Hux. On the positive side, Kylo Ren also kept away, but it was a difficult time; a time of constant datapad and comlink checking, of sighing and moping over the prescriptions, of regret as the last twinges of our physical contact faded away and my body was renewed, as if it had never happened.

_He’s a very busy man_ , I kept telling myself, but by day five with no contact it was getting hard to keep the faith.

I guessed perhaps he’d changed his mind and decided I wasn’t as different from those other girls as he’d thought.

Until, just as I was about to split for my mid-morning break, a delivery droid rolled up to the counter.

“Saxon,” it repeated, over and over, until I pushed the button that opened up its locked midsection. Having determined from my fingerprint that I was the intended recipient, it released its cargo. I took a black box out, quite a large one, stamped with the silver insignia of the atelier - the place people with real money went to shop for leisure clothes instead of the quartermaster’s stores.

“For me?” I queried, wondering if some mistake had been made.

“Saxon,” it repeated insistently. “Saxon, Saxon.”

It rolled away and I took the box into the store cupboard to investigate. Inside it was a pile of what looked like slinky black strapping and a note, which I snatched up and read.

‘Orders for En. S Saxon’ it read, with today’s date, in a neat, meticulous hand. ‘(1) Put on the contents of this package and wear them for the rest of the working day. (2) Report to 101 at twenty thirty wearing only this and the borrowed item.’

There was no signature. There was no need.

My self-respect could take a running jump. Nothing and nobody was going to get in the way of following these orders.


	13. 13

Bearing the box under my arm, I made a hurried trip to the lab freshers. They were best to get changed in, as they had some enclosed shower stalls for use in the event of somebody getting toxic gunk over themselves.

Locking myself in, I made hasty work of getting my boots, tunic and leggings off, followed by a set of underwear even more dully serviceable than that worn at the party. I’d tried browsing the Quartermaster’s data catalog for new lingerie, but they sold the same standard set in black or white. Nothing to set even the most febrile pulse racing.

Unlike…whatever this was…

In my naked state, I reopened the box and pulled out the curious contents. How did it work? How did I get it on? After some minutes of frowning concentration, I figured out from the placement of various clips roughly what was what. It was a kind of harness, but I didn’t think it had much to do with safety.

Eventually, after quite a lot of wrestling with satiny, gold-buckled straps, I managed to get it into what seemed to be the required configuration. I went to the full length mirror on the far wall and gasped at myself. It was by far the most indecent thing I had ever worn and I loved it.

The straps criss-crossed my body, covering certain areas of skin – but none of them were areas covered by conventional underwear. One passed between my breasts, then linked with a pair running above them, clipped on to another set that crossed my shoulders – but the breasts themselves were bare. The single strap that bisected my breasts joined with a belt of them circling my waist in a shallow V. To this belt affair was attached more straps forming the outline of a pair of knickers – but with nothing to fill them in! They delineated my pubic triangle, passed underneath it and hugged the lower curves of my bottom cheeks before clipping on to the rear section of the belt. A pair of side straps dangled loosely over my outer thighs and I was confused by this until I noticed a little extra in the box – a pair of stockings in very light silk. I put them on, clipped them to the suspenders and there I was, ready for ravishing. Everything a wicked pair of hands might require access to was fully and completely open to them.

And I was supposed to wear this for the rest of the day and work on as if nothing was amiss – I couldn’t help feeling that this, added to the high-strung anticipation of the evening ahead, was not going to do a lot for my productivity.

All the same, I obeyed instructions. I put my work gear, including the boring underwear, on top, dusted myself down and went to get my lab coat off the peg, rather thankful for an extra layer of concealment, since the feeling of the harness underneath everything was undeniably arousing and my nipples were standing out and proud.

It was tight without being painful, restrictive without stopping me functioning normally. It was like a secret embrace, happening in public, with nobody able to see it. It made me think of Hux, up on the bridge, going about his working day and trying to avoid imagining what I looked like in it and planning what he was going to do when he got me into his quarters. This was a very pleasing, albeit fatally distracting, mental image.

At the end of the working day, I returned to my quarters and reread the note that had accompanied the harness. I had to wear nothing but this, and the outdoor cape, and meet him in his private chambers. So, did that mean no shoes? I spent a long time pondering this – did shoes count as clothes? Had he just been so excited about the thought of seeing me in the harness that he had forgotten to consider them? I didn’t think it was very Hux-like to forget to consider something – so probably not. But why would he not want me to wear shoes? There didn’t seem to be any real reason for it.

Eventually I decided to wear shoes, but take them off in the turbolift and shove them into my bag, which would contain my work outfit. I didn’t know whether it was going to be an all-nighter again, but it was best to be prepared, and optimistic.

I stripped off and posed for a while in the fresher mirror before hauling the outdoor cape over my shoulders and wrapping it tightly around myself – it wouldn’t do for it to fall open in the elevator and give the droid an eyeful. I finished off with some slip-on sneakers and headed out to the lobby.

_Damn_. Janyss Colli was standing there chatting with a couple of other Pharma bugs.

“Hey, Sylva.” Her cheery greeting turned into a perplexed frown. “Are you going _out_? What are you wearing?”

“Oh…there’s a talk by one of the science officers…about the local ecology…I think we have to go outside for it…”

Kriff, how was I going to get away?

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“It wasn’t very well publicised. Anyway, I’m running late, so…”

“Wouldn’t you wear boots though?”

“Uh, they provide them…special boots. And gloves and stuff. Catch you later.”

“See you on the rec deck? There’s a new cocktail in the Atrium Bar tonight.”

“Yeah, maybe. Or tomorrow. Got to go, bye.”

“OK, you can tell us all about the local ecology,” she called after my hurriedly retreating figure. The cape was heavy and rough and brushed unforgivingly against my bare skin. I got into the general lift and headed for the nearest floor with access to Hux’s private shaft.

The security upload had worked well and I gained entrance without challenge, shooting up to level 101 and whatever might await me there.

The elevator opened into Hux’s quarters, which appeared to be empty. The holoscreen was dimmed and muted, the lights were low, soft music was coming from somewhere unidentifiable. Wasn’t he here yet? Was he in the fresher? Had he been called away? It seemed unlikely, since he had been so adamant that I wasn’t to be left alone in the apartment. Perhaps it was a test…

I stepped forward into the room, looking around.

“General?”

“Take off the cape and stand in the middle of the room.”

I almost leapt out of my skin. His voice, amplified, coming from somewhere – but where was _he_?

“Uh…yes, sir…where are you?”

I found a central point and unwrapped myself, dropping the cape down over my bag beside me, craning my neck into every corner but finding no sign of Hux.

“No questions, Saxon. Just do as you’re told. Raise your arms above your head.”

I did so, feeling twenty times more naked in this harness thing than I would have done nude.

A pause, then, gloatingly, “Yes, that’s very nice. Turn around – slowly.”

I executed a 360 degree turn, still trying to figure out where he was. He could see me, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was anywhere near. He could be behind the couch or he could be on the bridge, using surveillance equipment.

“All right,” he said. “Now, on the side table to your right, there’s a mask. Put it on.”

It was black silk eye mask on a piece of elastic, something a rich woman might wear to sleep in. I fitted it to my face, apprehensive now about what he might have in mind for me. I hated not being able to see.

“Good. Take a few steps back towards the centre…yes…now kneel.”

I got on to my knees and rested back on my heels.

“Kneel _up_ ,” he clarified. “Chin up. Hands clasped behind your back. I want your knees apart, though…a little more…perfect. Stay, and keep that mask where it is, or there will be serious trouble.”

I waited. No sound, except the music, which – unless I was imagining it – had increased in volume. I knelt, feeling very conscious of my parted thighs and exposed sex, not to mention my stiff nipples. Wherever he was, he was watching me.

I yelped out in shock as a leather-gloved hand took hold of my chin. How had he got here? I hadn’t even heard a hint of footstep.

“Good girl,” he said, his lips up against my ear, then he kissed me, my face tight in his grip, while my chest and shoulders heaved hectically. “I thought you might try to peek, but you didn’t, did you?”

“No, sir, of course not.”

“Are you always so obedient?” he wondered. “I’m tempted to test your limits. I almost certainly shall at some point. But we’ll keep things easy for now, I think.”

It was a relief, of a sort, to hear it. My nerves were still trying to come to terms with his sudden arrival and I needed reassurance.

“I like the new underwear,” he said, stroking my face from hairline to cheek. “You can keep it. I want you to wear it every day. Is it uncomfortable?”

“A little, sir,” I admitted.

“That’s what I wanted. I wanted it to be just a little bit uncomfortable, so you can’t forget you’re wearing it. That way, you’ll have to think about me, and your obedience to me, even when I’m not with you.”

“I think about that all the time anyway, sir,” I said, and he chuckled and pinched my cheek.

“Glad to hear it.” He grabbed a handful of my hair and held it tight, and I gasped as he rubbed his booted foot up the inside of one naked thigh until it sat at the apex of my legs. He moved it slowly backwards and forwards along my lips, and I could only imagine how shiny it was getting with my juices.

“Hmm,” he said, slightly unsteadily, removing the boot and pushing my head downwards. “Bend forward and kiss it.”

He manipulated me into position above his boot until I could smell myself on the leather. I edged closer and kissed the spot in question, then put out my tongue and licked it clean.

“Without being asked,” he said, sounding impressed. “I like your initiative, but in future, wait for the order. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Good. Now…up.” He helped me up by my elbow and steered me, gloved hands on my bare shoulders, away from the centre of the room. I was half-turned, then pushed firmly down until my bottom hit cold slick leather. I was on a chair, some kind of reclining or adjustable chair, as the back was very low and I could feel more leather behind my legs.

“Lie back,” said Hux, and I unbent my spine until I was half-sitting, half-lying, as if in a dentist’s chair. Was this a dentist’s chair? The association made my heart beat unpleasantly fast and a cold sweat break out.

“Please don’t do anything to my teeth,” I blurted without being able to stop myself.

He sighed, bent over me, kissed my mouth then the tip of my nose, then my forehead.

“You’re so sweet when you’re afraid,” he said. “But don’t worry. Your teeth are the last things on my mind. Since you’re so skittish, though, I’ll remove the eye mask in a moment or two. But first, I want you to put your hands above your head and part your knees again. There we are. Give me some time to feast my eyes, then I think we’re ready.”

But ready for what? I was almost scared to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol @ 'Hux's private shaft'


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody seen a plot around here? Or is it lost in space? Oh well, the smut gives me a bit of head space to work on it. In the meantime, Hux's kinky side is in full swing...

When he lifted the mask clear of my face, it took me a few seconds to focus before his dark-clad pale-faced orange-topped shape sharpened into unmistakable Hux.

He stood at the side of the chair, gazing down at me, twin patches of pink on his cheeks betraying how very much he was enjoying the scenery.

“So it _is_ you,” I said, apparently desperate to dissolve the tension between us with idiotic jokes. I knew this was a habit Hux would break me of eventually, but for now, I was its slave.

“Yes,” he sighed wearily. “Of course. I don’t remember giving you permission to speak, Saxon.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” he said, pressing a button on a handset attached to his belt. The lower part of the chair behind my legs moved inexorably upwards until they were stretched out in front of me. He slid one arm beneath my knees and raised them up until my bottom was lifted almost clear of the seat. He gave each cheek a sharp smack.

“Are you going to behave?” he asked me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You might as well keep those legs in the air now,” he said, letting go of them and moving to stand at the best vantage point for getting a good look between my spread thighs. “And the hands can stay where they are too.”

I shut my eyes, blushing to death at the consciousness of all he could see of me, all he could do to me, and how he knew he could do it because I was desperate for him.

“So,” he said, moving to my side and running a gloved finger underneath the straps that crossed my collar bone. “You didn’t want to be tied up, so I’m not tying you up. But this is going to be harder for you, now, because there’s nothing holding you in position.” The finger found a junction and ran down between my breasts and over my belly. “Nothing but your own submission to me,” he whispered, his face close to mine now. “Do you think you’re equal to the challenge, Saxon?”

I had to be honest. “I’m…not sure, sir. I hope so.”

“You should hope so. There are consequences for any unauthorised moving or touching. So keep your mind on your task. Arms up. Legs high. Completely still.”

He kissed me, his fist wrapped around the waistband of the harness, his knuckles pressing into the softness of my lower belly, just above my pubic bone. I opened up, craving his hot, warm mouth, his tongue taking possession of me.

He continued kissing as his finger resumed its languid exploration of my harness, running slowly underneath each strap, now reaching the more interesting lower-placed examples. As he outlined my triangle then slipped underneath to drift up my bottom, I trembled at the sensation and let out a soft little moan. Was that allowed? He didn’t reprove me for it, so I supposed I could make noises.

“Do you like this?” he asked, but he wasn’t expecting an answer because he popped a finger into my mouth and made me suck on its leathery thickness while he used the other hand to keep up its exhaustive examination of the straps that bound my body. This was insanely arousing but the point soon came when I needed him to move his hands on to what lay within those elasticated borders.

Forbidden to move or speak, I had no way of directing him towards the parts of me that needed him most. It was the sweetest, cruellest of torments, and I was bringing it all on myself. Because I _could_ move. I _could_ speak. I was just choosing not to, because I knew that, by pleasing him, I would earn a greater reward in the end.

At _last_ he stopped playing with the harness and started playing with my breasts, cupping both of them in his creaky leather hands, stroking and squeezing, giving my nipples a few gentle twists then a sharper pinch, waiting until they were red and tingling before taking them in his mouth and nipping at them with his teeth.

His hands moved down, working on my inner thighs, which were beginning to shake with the effort of remaining in position unassisted. The discomfort caused by this, though, was _nothing_ compared to my agonising need to get some serious attention in between them. As he kneaded the sensitive skin right at the top of my legs, just outside my lips, I began to pant hard, desperate to convey somehow that I would die if he didn’t touch me there soon.

“Mmmm,” I dared, as he began to attend to my buttocks.

He lifted his head from my breasts, which were now patchy with little red marks where he’d sucked at them.

“Careful, Saxon,” he warned. “You’re getting carried away. Remember what you have to do.”

Oh _Sith_ , he was the most evil man alive. Perfectly, horribly, gloriously merciless.

I tried my best not to wriggle or plead, but it was becoming impossible. The feel of his gloved hands cupping my bottom and pulling my cheeks apart was more than my libido could take.

I let out a helpless little yelp, my head turning rapidly from side to side now. I arched my back, raising my sex towards him; an offering.

He tutted and sighed, then he stepped away from me and went to retrieve something from a drawer while I emitted a moan at being abandoned.

“I did say there would be consequences,” he said, returning to me. He was holding a familiar object – the whip from the gym. “Do you remember this, Saxon?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, trying to convey in these two basic words a heartfelt appeal for mercy, even though the sight of it, as he tapped one end into his slick black palm, was incredibly exciting.

“What did I do with it?”

“You hit me with it, sir.”

“I gave you what you deserved,” he corrected. “And you deserve it now.” He braced one arm against the backs of my ankles, making sure I couldn’t kick, and tapped the end of the rod against my lifted bottom. “I’m going to give you six, then we’ll try again.”

“Yes, sir,” I sighed, more woebegone about disobeying him than the punishment, which I was almost looking forward to. At least, I was looking forward to being able to watch him while he laid on the strokes – a privilege that had been denied me in that infernal gym.

Although my knees were almost in my face, my thighs blocking the view of the actual target area, I could see Hux standing just to the front and right of me, stroking the long thin whip backwards and forwards across my bum. The set of his face was stern but his eyes glowed with sadistic pleasure. I hoped I’d be seeing this look a lot in future.

“Remember, Saxon,” he said, very quietly, still brushing my skin with the whip as if preparing it, “you can stop any of this at any time.”

“I know, sir,” I said, but I didn’t want to be reminded.

“Right. You can make a noise for this, but I don’t want you moving out of position, understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

He flexed his arm and flicked the whip against my bottom, so quickly that I was caught unawares and my arms shot forward instinctively. It hadn’t even been a hard stroke and my eyes filled with tears at having failed the test before it had truly begun.

“No, Saxon,” he said firmly, waiting for me to put my arms back above my head. “We’re going to have to practise this a lot, I think. That one won’t count. I’ll start again.”

I was ready now, and I gritted my teeth and tried to imagine that my wrists were weighed down with heavy metal bracelets.

The rod swished down, hard and sharp this time. It hurt a lot, and I had to cry out, but I managed not to move.

“Better,” said Hux approvingly. “Five more, with extra strokes for any movement.”

I was still processing the first scorching line across the middle of my bottom when he struck again, lower, closer to my thighs. It was a real lash, burning on impact, then getting more intense for a few seconds until it reached a perfect point of soreness and stayed there. Hux seemed to know how long this took, for he waited that exact period of time before administering another one. It was expert work. He didn’t give me a microsecond in which to compose myself, to let the sting fade or become familiar, before laying on the next.

I made it to four before trying to twist my hips out of his way and swearing profusely when I couldn’t elude his grip and had to take the stroke.

“Not good, Saxon. I’ll add another,” he said and I made a childish sobbing sound, but I was nowhere close to asking him to stop. I was increasingly aware of the insistent throb of my clit, which seemed to be burning just as hot as my bottom. I took a breath, gritted my teeth, thought about the pleasures to come.

It got me through the next two, even the one he placed right in the crease between my bum and thighs, which stung like all fuck.

“One more,” he said, running the tip of the rod along each of the six raised welts he had criss-crossed on to my skin. “It’ll be the hardest one. You can thank me after this.”

It was the hardest one. It made me howl and try to kick really hard against his immovable arm, because it crossed quite a few of the previous strokes and reawakened them until I felt as if my entire bottom had been repeatedly stung by wasps.

“I warned you,” he said.

He tapped the end of the whip against my cheek.

“Well?”

“Thank you, sir,” I managed to say.

“For what?”

“For…correcting me, sir.”

“Very good. Good choice of words.” He ran the tip of his weapon along my lips. I kissed it. He smiled and trailed it down over my chin, along my neck, around my breasts, rubbing at my nipples which still smarted from his earlier attentions. “You did quite well, considering. For a beginner. But there’ll be plenty of opportunity to practise.”

“Oh joy,” I said with reflexive sarcasm. Of course I regretted it immediately, but his only reaction was a raised eyebrow.

“Something else you’ll need to practise, Saxon,” he said. “Curbing that smart mouth of yours. Perhaps I should gag you until you learn how.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Apology accepted, but regard this as your first verbal warning. All right.” He tapped the whip briskly against the inside of each thigh. “Spread them a little wider. We’re going to try again.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

This time I was going to do it. I was going to succeed, and nothing Hux said or did was going to stop me. My legs were trembling in their stress position, I was sweating and my bottom was stinging fiercely, but I was hellbent on staying still and quiet, no matter what.

He started again; the slow inexorable progress of one finger under each strap, taking its time, stopping to pull the harness tighter, or stroke little favourite spots. But I was elsewhere, my mind on things that had happened at work, small problems that needed solving. As long as he didn’t go too close to any of my hotter spots I could maintain this mental distance and control my physical reactions.

Even when he moved on to review his treatment of my breasts, I was able to keep everything at bay by chanting old battle hymns from home in my head. He was deft and skilled and little pulses of arousal broke through my protective wall now and then, but I could hold the line, as long as he didn’t…ohh…

This was getting harder. My breathing became irregular; I found myself stuck on the same line of the hymn, over and over. He traced a leathery fingertip along the welts on my bottom, making them throb anew.

“Are you still awake, Saxon?” he asked, as if disappointed by my failure to fail.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, hissing with discomfort as he prodded and pinched at one lash mark.

“Perhaps there are a few shreds of self-discipline in there somewhere,” he mused, massaging the area between my inner thighs and outer lips. I was so wet down there that I could hear myself as his thumbs worked their slow magic. My clit felt swollen and heavy, begging for a touch, however slight, to give relief.

“You’ve done much better,” he said. “Well done. I’m going to let you come.”

Well, hallelujah, as the battle hymns might have said.

“Thank you, sir,” I muttered.

My eyes widened as he bent to retrieve the whip from the floor. What did he need that for?

He pressed a button on his belt handset and the lower portion of the chair moved back down, leaving my bottom hanging rather perilously on the very edge of the seat. He moved quickly in between my legs, ensuring that they were kept high and spread by tapping the backs of my knees with his whip until I was steady in my position. If there was any further danger of falling out of it, he solved the problem by placing one palm flat between my legs, cold and smooth over my throbbing clit. It felt incredible, even more so when he used his whip-holding hand to rub its tip slowly around and over my nipples.

I shut my eyes and a long helpless sigh floated out of me.

“Look at me,” he commanded. “Keep those eyes open. I want to watch you.”

I forced my eyelids up and saw a slightly blurred Hux, black clad and still in perfect uniform trim, towering over me, the heel of his hand visible above my pubic mound while the rest had begun to move against my clit, just a very slow up-and-down at first but it was almost enough. My orgasm was so close it seemed to shimmer in the air between us. He continued to flick and tap the rod against my nipples, not hard, just hard enough to draw sparks of sweet/sore sensation out of them. The sight of his fist wrapped around the whip handle as he manipulated it was shockingly hot, as was the almost manic brightness of his eyes and the tautness of his facial muscles as he performed his diabolic deeds.

He shifted his lower hand so that his thumb was pressed against my clit and two fingers speared, effortlessly, inside my vagina. It was so effortless that he quickly introduced a third, twisting them around and probing inside me while his thumb stroked lazy circles around my clit.

Much as I had basked in his admiration of my self-discipline, I didn’t have it in me to hold out now. I was dizzy with the force of what was coming, and I blurted out a warning.

“Oh, it’s…I’m…”

“Eyes open,” he reminded, holding the whip under my chin to keep my face angled to his.

I watched him grit his teeth together and bare them in a triumphant rictus as I began to kick and wail, feeling as if my entire inner self was streaming out on to his busy fingers.

Once I had finished floundering and my entire body was limp, he bent and kissed me, his fingers still inside, his other hand dropping the whip and holding my face still for him.

He drew his fingers out of me as the kiss ended. He pulled me upright, though I could barely stand, kissed me again, turned me around by the shoulders and nudged me back down on to the chair, which he had manoeuvered into a kind of sloping medical consultation couch during the kiss.

I found myself prone on the black leather, my head low down, my bottom high, my legs hanging over the edge. My feet didn’t quite reach the floor. Behind me, the sound of sundry items of officer-level uniform hitting the floor constructed a symphony of jingles and clinks and flops.

His hands, now ungloved, took hold of my hips. He stepped up behind me, and I understood that I was at the perfect, precise height for him to enter me standing, because this is what he did. Thick and hard, he slid into me as if I were butter. He grunted as he slammed into me. I gripped the sides of the chair and held tight, pushing back, loving the fullness and the frenetic pace.

I loved as well the way each thrust smacked against my whip marks, making them sting with sweat and burn anew so that I was on fire throughout my body. This combined with the friction inside me, and my consciousness of being just a helpless vessel for Hux’s designs, to build another, bigger, crazier orgasm that hit me just as Hux achieved his own moment of completion, holding me tightly still as he poured into me.

I lay there, still with my legs dangling and my body incapable of movement, until Hux withdrew and reconfigured the chair into a flat position.

“The droids have a lot of cleaning up to do,” he observed, frowning at the state of the chair as he came to perch by my dazzled head, one hand in my soaked hair.

“That was amazing,” I slurred.

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Hux had no time for false modesty, it seemed. He clicked his fingers at the droids in the corner, who powered up immediately. “Run a bath,” he ordered.

Ten minutes later, lying in the shoulder-deep perfumed water waiting for Hux, who was answering messages on his datapad, I heard an alarm tone from the holoscreen. The fresher door was open and Hux didn’t seem to realise, because he didn’t shut it before the transmission started.

“I have seen your projections.” The voice was booming and rasping at once, and deeply unpleasant. Who was it? Could it be…

“And what are your thoughts, Supreme Leader?” Hux asked eagerly.

_It was!_

“The costs, of course, will be met,” replied Snoke. “No matter what. But you allow far too much time for the test phase. We need this weapon to be operational before Ilan spring. The Republic need to be taken unawares, and every day past winter gives them extra time to discover and chart us.”

“I understand that, of course, Supreme Leader, but this weapon is something entirely new and unique; rushing it could result in disaster for us…”

“The test phase must be shortened,” thundered Snoke. “Halve it. See that it is done.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” Hux sounded extremely tense. “I can revisit the projections and have a new set of figures for you by…”

“Tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow.”

The holoscreen clunked out of action and a long, under-the-breath string of curses came from the adjoining room.

When he appeared, wrapped in a dark cotton robe, at the fresher door, he was paler than I had ever seen him.

“I suppose you heard all that,” he said.

“I couldn’t really avoid…”

“No,” he concurred, shedding the robe and climbing into the bath. “The droids should have seen that the door was shut. I’ll have them decommissioned.”

“Oh, that’s a bit unnecessary,” I protested but he held up a hand, silencing me.

He lay at the other end of the tub, brooding into the middle distance for at least five silent minutes.

“What’s Ilan spring like?” I asked, aiming to defuse a bit of tension.

“Like Ilan winter,” he replied tersely. “But the planet is more visible from a distance, because it isn’t circled by as many storm clouds.”

“Oh right. That’s why he wants it before…”

“Let’s not discuss this, Saxon.” His tone was forbidding.

How could I reach him? He seemed light years away.

“Sir,” I said gently, swooshing myself a little bit closer. “Will you give me permission to touch you?”

His hard gaze softened at that and his eyes focused properly on me.

“What do you have in mind?”

“When I was at the Institute I did a voluntary class in musculo-skeletal tension relief. I could…”

“The massage? You mentioned massages, that time in the MedCentre.”

“Exactly, sir. Would you like me to?”

He took a breath, forced a smile out.

“Well, perhaps that might be quite nice,” he admitted.

“Great. Let me get behind you then…and lean forward a bit or I can’t reach properly…yeah. Good.”

I sat behind him, my thighs athwart his hips, and emptied some foaming gel into my hand while Hux, stooping forward, awaited my attentions. I put foamy hands on his shoulders and began the routine I’d learned at the Institute, seeking knots, finding them, working them.

He didn’t speak, but his breathing lengthened and deepened until it transmuted into a series of sighs.

“You’re very tense,” I said, pressing my thumbs into the back of his neck. “You must be under a lot of pressure.”

“Brilliant deduction,” he snarked, but without rancour. “Heading up a galactic revolution will do that to a man.”

“I think the pressure is coming from a lot of directions,” I said, kneading on. “A lot of it is pressure you put on yourself, because you have very exacting standards.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “I wouldn’t have got very far in life if I hadn’t.”

“It’s not a criticism,” I said. “But you also face pressure from above – from the Supreme Leader.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that,” he snapped, and I felt him tense again.

“No, no, no,” I reproached. “Let that go…relax those muscles…”

He groaned with pleasure as I hit the spot.

“And also perhaps,” I continued, needing to know more about him, “pressure from relationships. With colleagues.”

“Don’t start,” he warned. “I don’t want to…kriff, oh yes, that’s good…don’t stop…”

“First you say don’t start then you say don’t stop,” I teased. “What’s a girl to do? Shall I stop now?”

“Don’t you dare…ahhhh.” I moved down the knobs of his spine, loosening him a little more with each one. “All right,” he breathed, finally floating free, “you might have a point. There’s nothing relaxing about my life here. Except you.”

“Everyone needs a pressure valve,” I said, feeling a little starry-eyed at these scant words of appreciation. “Without one, you could burn out very quickly, General.”

“I’ll have you put on prescription,” he suggested, leaning back and capturing me in a long, lazy kiss. We writhed and twisted around each other, like mythical sea creatures in frolic, until our skin wrinkled and the water chilled.

“I’m afraid I really must get to work,” he sighed, disengaging. “Much as I would like to entertain you further. I have a long night ahead.”

“I know,” I said, touched by his genuine regret. “I guess I’ll go back to my quarters.”

“Probably best. Go and dry yourself and get dressed now. I’ll see you out.”

It was just as well I’d brought spare clothes.

I stood in the turbolift down, my lips stinging from his goodbye kiss, and ached to be back with him, in his giant bed, bringing in the dawn again after a long, debauched night. But as well as that, I just wanted to hold him and let him know a little uncomplicated peace.

Oh dear. This was getting dangerous.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

The weapon.

The words rolled over and over in my mind as I lay in my bunk, searching for sleep, which remained elusive despite my bodily bone-weariness. I alternated between recollections of the earlier evening, so vivid they made me moan, and the insistent tattoo of this bland but menacing phrase.

Of course, everyone on Starkiller knew that that was what it had been built for. A giant housing for a giant armament. But those who were working on it were strictly forbidden from discussing it, with the result that speculation swirled among all the ancillary staff, even the stormtroopers. Only the techies and top ranking senior personnel knew for sure what it was and how it would operate.

The popular opinion was that Starkiller was an upgraded, updated version of the Death Star, albeit anchored to a planet to reduce vulnerability. This would make the Weapon capable of destroying an entire world, as happened to Alderaan during the civil war.

Others said it would be more powerful than that.

Still others theorised that it wasn’t that kind of weapon; that it would be biological or viral. I didn’t go along with that theory because we would have known about it in the lab.

Whatever it was, it was going to be capable of wiping out a lot of life very quickly. And I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Of course, I understood that wars weren’t won and corrupt regimes overturned without loss of life, often substantial. But I was much more comfortable with that loss of life being confined to the military. When I thought of worlds being destroyed, I thought of our opposite numbers: the pharmacists and medics who were paid by the Republic – people just like me, just like Riina, but who had been born on the other side. Or, indeed, no side at all.

I had been angry with the Republic all my life – I’d been taught to be. We’d all learned how the reputation of the Galactic Empire had been traduced and tarnished by its unwieldy, incompetent replacement. We were all eager for a day when slovenly and corrupt government was replaced with a decent, efficient alternative, offering fairness and hope for all.

But at what cost?

The other thing bothering me was the chain of command. Hux in charge of the galaxy wasn’t too terrifying a thought. He was focused, effective and would get shit done.

But I hadn’t been at all favourably struck by my brief acquaintance with Supreme Leader Snoke, and Kylo Ren too seemed a loose cannon at best. What kind of future might we have with beings like this at the helm? Where would they take us?

I had no answers to these questions and eventually my brain accepted that its best option was sleep.

The next day in the Pharmacopeia, Kylo Ren reappeared. This time Janyss was not there to save me, and I had to face him myself.

“Are you here to take the test, sir?” I asked him brightly.

“What test?” he asked, before remembering. “No,” he snarled. “Like I said, no need.”

I hadn’t heard that Knights of Ren took a vow of chastity, but perhaps they did, so I let the matter drop.

“In that case, how can I help you?”

“By meeting me tonight on the Officers’ Rec Deck.”

“What? Uh, I’m sorry, sir?”

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all. Tonight. When do you get off?”

“Eighteen, sir.”

“At nineteen, then. In the cocktail bar.”

I must have been staring at him like a stunned scalefish because he chuckled, a very strange sound crackling out from that helmet.

“What’s so shocking? Hasn’t anybody ever asked you on a date before?” He leant forward, elbow on the counter. “I find _that_ hard to believe. I bet you’ve been asked quite recently.”

“Nnnno, sir,” I said, but I could feel the heat surging underneath my skin. What did he know about me and Hux? How did he know it?

“Right,” he said, straightening up. “So, I’ll see you later.”

And off he strode.

I stood there, feeling like somebody who had just strayed into the path of an AT-AT. What was going on here? I was pretty sure the invitation wasn’t the result of simple admiration. Sith, _why_ did Hux have to be uncontactable? Wasn’t there any way…?

Janyss appeared on the scene just as my frozen braincells were beginning to thaw.

“Ah, you’re here, great,” I said, flapping. “I just need to…pop out for a moment. Can you hold the fort?”

“Sure,” she said, bemused, as I made a sharp exit from the Pharmacopeia.

As soon as I was out on the walkway, I started asking myself where I was going and why. I had no real idea. Perhaps it was just a need to pace, to give myself room to think. Should I try to get a message to Hux? What if I did and he was annoyed, finding the whole situation trivial and unworthy of his attention? It seemed quite likely that he might react like this. He was very busy and I was just…amusement. Nothing serious.

I was just going to have to meet up with Ren and see what happened. Play dumb if he asked about Hux, keep quiet, try to bore him off the scent. Yes. I’d do that.

I walked back to the Pharmacopeia, breathing a little more evenly.

At nineteen, I turned up in the lobby of the Officers’ Rec Deck, still in my work attire, as I had no intention of dressing up for Kylo Ren.

“You are not an officer,” stated the Reception droid baldly. “State your purpose.”

“I’m supposed to be meeting an officer here,” I said. “Lord Ren.”

“Ah. Ensign Saxon?”

“Yes.”

“I will inform Lord Ren that you have arrived.”

He pressed a button and, an awkward minute or so later, Kylo Ren appeared, sans helmet, at the arched entrance to the restaurant.

“She’s cleared,” he said to the droid, who bowed and ushered me towards my date. “There’s a dress code,” he said to me, scowling at my lack of titivational effort.

“Am I violating it?”

“Yes, but never mind. They make exceptions for me and my guests.” He walked ahead of me, into the restaurant, which was a festive wonderland of rainbow-coloured lighting and exotic plants. He clicked his fingers at a bartender and ordered two jynnan tonyx to be brought to our table, which was at the top of a tall glass spiral stairway.

It stood on a platform of its own, beneath a bower of heavily scented hothouse flowers. In other circumstances, I might find it romantic. I fantasised for a misty-eyed moment that Hux was my companion, bringing me here for a special meal.

“Take a seat,” offered Kylo Ren, gesturing at the elegant shiny-black chair I stood beside.

I sat down and the drinks arrived via a little whirring flying droid with tray attachment.

“This stuff is strong,” I remarked, sucking down a mouthful.

“It’s distilled here,” said Ren. “The ingredients are shipped in from M’lan.”

“Oh, that’s in my system.”

“I know. You’re from Floris.”

I put my drink down, unnerved by this, but determined not to bite.

“And you? Where did you grow up?”

“Chandrila,” he muttered. “But I’m not here to reminisce about my childhood.”

I refrained from asking the question he wanted to answer – ‘so why are you here?’ – and parried with a bland, “They say Chandrila has a very nice climate.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“What did you hear that day?” he demanded, throwing me off kilter.

“What…day?”

“That day you took Hux to the Medicentre.”

“Oh… _that_ day. Not much really. I was just walking up the corridor at the time. I heard a few choice epithets, then the sound of helmet meeting redhead. That’s pretty much it.”

His face loomed unnervingly close, his eyes searching mine.

“I guess you’re telling the truth,” he said at last.

“I guess I am,” I snapped back. “And, to be honest, I don’t really make a habit of going out with guys who chuck their headgear about. I don’t think we’re ideally suited.”

“Whereas you and Hux…?”

“Look, I’m just a pharma bug. I’m a nobody. I get up, do my job, go to sleep, repeat. There’s nothing else going on in my life. You’re not about to be invited to play Best Man at Hux’s wedding.”

He almost cracked a smile.

“I don’t buy it,” he said. “There’s something going on. Are you working for him? Secret projects? Something biological he doesn’t want me or the Supreme Leader to know about?”

“What? Of course not!”

“Because everyone was talking about your dance, and how you both left the party early. Is that it? You’re working together on… what?”

“We aren’t working together,” I said, truthfully enough, wondering if it would be such a bad thing if Kylo Ren knew the true state of affairs. But no. Hux had said there were ‘certain people’ he didn’t want knowing, and my money was on at least one of those being Ren.

“But you’re playing together? You’re fucking him?”

“Not that it’s _any_ of your business, but no. I have someone…else. That is, I’m seeing someone.”

“Someone on Starkiller?” Ren’s eyes were round.

“I’d rather not say.” _Shit_ , how was I going to get out of this? Could I try the vomiting trick a second time? I was pretty sure he was close to giving the look-into-my-eyes trick another whirl.

“You’re breaking my heart,” he deadpanned, catching a menu as it floated past. “But how do I know you aren’t just playing hard to get? I like a challenge. Always did.”

“I’m not available,” I said, and he shook his head.

“Have you seen this menu? Can your nameless lover give you anything of this quality?”

He held it up in front of me. I had to say, it was tempting. Dried fish flakes from the Ilan lakes were getting really old, and the meat on the local bears was tougher than old boots. But this menu listed imported delicacies I hadn’t ever dreamed of being able to afford to sample.

“No,” I admitted.

“So you could be tempted?”

“Look, Lord Ren, you’ve got the looks, the power, the money, the…destiny…I dunno. You could have someone much better than me.”

“I don’t want someone much better than you.” He leant forward, and I sensed the eye thing was dangerously close again, so I looked down into my drink. “I like _you_ , Ensign.”

The hell he did. There was no real warmth in the words, no sparkle in his eye. This was pure gamesmanship. For some reason, he really wanted me to admit that I was involved with Hux and I was not going to give him the satisfaction.

“I’m not getting close to somebody who hasn’t had the sexual health screening _or_ the Concep-3 shot in the last six months,” I said primly.

He threw up his hands.

“All right, if you have to know, I can’t take that shot because I have a rare allergy to one of the ingredients. Is that OK with you? Will you get off my back now?”

“Oh, really? I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“Well, you wouldn’t, without seeing my full medical records. And I didn’t do the screening because there was no point, since I can’t…”

“Ah, now, surely there are other things you can…”

He flapped his hands at me to shut up. His face was furiously red.

“None of it is in stock _here_ though, is it?” he snarled.

“Oh, no, I guess not, since everybody gets the…” I chewed my lip. “Look, next time I get home leave I could pick you up a few condoms if you like.”

“Just go,” he said. “Go away and screw Hux. I know that’s what you’re doing. I’ll find you out, see if I don’t.”

I stood up, somewhat relieved by this dismissal, even a little sorry for poor sexually frustrated Kylo Ren. But I had to let Hux know that he was on our scent, as soon as I could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone spot my little tribute to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? :D


End file.
